Zeke Bartholomew Read online

  “Bye, Gertie.”

  I turned the door knob…and suddenly an explosion threw me backward. My body slammed against a wall, and I crumpled to the floor, dazed.

  “What the heck…” I muttered, slowly getting to my knees. I looked up. And after how I reacted to what I saw standing in the decimated doorway, I’m pretty sure nobody would ever want to wear those pants again.

  In the doorway was a massive man, nearly seven feet tall. He wore a suit of startling bright white, every inch of the outfit striated with red tubes that crisscrossed along the seams. It appeared as though a red liquid was running through the tubes. He had on a clear visor, and below that visor was a face that glowed a terrifying bright red. He was bald. His eyes were wide open, tinged the color of burnt amber.

  On one hand was a massively padded white glove that looked like it could dislodge a train from its tracks. The other hand was gloveless—and it glowed the bright red of a well-kindled fire. Tendrils of smoke emanated from the exposed hand. Wood from the shattered doorway glowed red, several shards ablaze. Had he done that with his freaky red hand?

  “Ezekiel Bartholomew,” the man said, his voice guttural, amplified through what sounded like speakers in the visor.

  Not Derek Lance. Ezekiel Bartholomew. He knew who I was.

  “Wha…how do you know my name?”

  The massive white hulk didn’t respond. Instead he crossed the doorway, each footstep causing the floor to tremble. I backed up against the wall. He crossed the foyer in seconds. I was barely up to his shoulders. The gigantic man stood in front of me. Looked me over for a brief moment. Then reared the ungloved, red hand back and…

  “HOLY CRAP!” I shouted, diving out of the way a split second before the huge appendage came hurtling forward, lodging itself in the wall right where my head had just been. Ever wondered what a grapefruit would look like after getting hit by a nuclear weapon? I’m pretty sure that’s what my head would have resembled had the punch connected.

  I rolled out of the way and sprinted into Gertie’s living room. The hulking man yanked his fist from the wall, leaving a small fire in its wake. I watched in disbelief. Somehow the man’s skin possessed the ability to create spontaneous combustion.

  I only had a moment to feel dorky about knowing the term “spontaneous combustion” before the man lumbered after me into the living room. By that time, the fire from the doorway had caught onto the curtains. Flames began to lick at the ceiling.

  “Gertie!” I shouted. “Run!”

  “Way ahead of you, kid!” I saw Gertie sprint toward the door. Well, sprint isn’t the right word. No, she ambled the best an elderly woman could. I heard a set of car keys jingling in her hand. “Thanks for setting my house on fire, Zeke! Now the insurance company will have no choice but to pay through the nose! Oh, and try to stay alive!”

  Then Gertie was gone.

  I ran behind the old couch. The ghostlike hulk stopped in front of it.

  “Now, hold on a freaking second!” I shouted. “I’m not Derek Lance. I’m Zeke Bartholomew. I’m in the seventh grade. I suck at dodgeball. I got a C- on my last social studies test. And I don’t have any stupid codes!”

  “You know about Operation Songbird,” the hulk said. “For that, you cannot live.”

  I ducked down just as a huge boot sent the couch hurtling over my head. Oh, sure, best dodgeball move I’ve made in my life, and of course nobody from school was there to see it.

  I scrambled out of the living room and into the kitchen. The white hulk followed me.

  On the counter was a rolling pin. I picked it up, turned back to the monster, and hurled it at his face with every ounce of strength I could muster. I let out a manly PHNEGH! sound as the rolling pin left my hand.

  I watched it fly as if in slow motion—as it harmlessly bounced off the man’s visor and plunked to the ground, where it lay, seeming to mock my ineptitude. I turned back to the hulk. A backhand with his gloved fist sent me face-first into the refrigerator.

  The blow nearly knocked me unconscious. Woozy, my reflexes were just intact enough to sidestep a punch from the ungloved fist. The fist shattered the fridge, plowing through its metal door.

  Suddenly I heard a high-pitched noise so loud that I had to cover my ears. I looked up to see the hulk withdraw his hand from the freezer. He stared at it, the face beneath his visor contorted into a look of pure agony. White steam was pouring off his hand, and small blisters were forming and then popping, a disgusting red ooze flowing out from the burst pustules.

  He quickly snapped the glove back over his wounded limb and doubled over in pain. This was my chance.

  I ran from the kitchen. The entire house was bathed in red flames. Wooden beams were crashing down around me. I could feel the heat singeing my eyebrows. I coughed as I drew smoke into my lungs. The bashed-in doorway was a ring of fire. I had no choice. The hulk was certainly regrouping somewhere behind me.

  “Just like gymnastic class,” I said, with a complete lack of confidence, considering I’d once fallen spread-legged on the balance beam, necessitating a daylong stay in the school nurse’s station with bruised…never mind.

  I closed my eyes. Sucked in one last lungful of air. Then leaped through the fiery doorway.

  I landed with a thud, the gravel from Gertie’s driveway scraping my arms and face. I lay there for a moment, then sprang back up. I checked my body. Nothing on fire. Nothing appeared to be broken. Unfortunately the same could not be said for Gertie Zimmerman’s house.

  The roof had sagged in, and pillars of fire raged through the night sky. Smoke billowed into the air. If Gertie hadn’t been so happy to be done with the place, I would have felt really, really bad.

  Then, without warning, the entire roof collapsed, sending a mountain of ash and sparks into the air. I stepped back, shielding my eyes from the smoldering wreckage.

  The hulk. He was still in there. I wasn’t sure how to react to the monster’s death.

  Unluckily for me, I didn’t have much time to worry about it.

  Several pieces of wood went flying, and out of the wooden mess stepped the monster. My jaw dropped. He paused. Brushed some ash and wood from the white suit. And began heading right back toward me.

  I walked backward. The sun was beginning to come up, and I could see the panic in my face reflected in his clear visor. There was no emotion in his eyes. He was going to kill me. Really, really soon.

  He clutched his left hand like a bird with an injured wing. But it didn’t slow him down. And I had nowhere to run.

  Slowly backing up, I held out my hands.

  “We can talk about this, right? Why don’t you just tell me your dastardly plans first?”

  I figured my best chance to get away was to get the monster monologuing—revealing his evil plans in such excruciating, long-winded detail that I could sneak away while he talked about how he was going to destroy humanity, yada yada yada.

  Instead, the giant man said nothing. He removed the glove from his uninjured hand. Both his eyes and his clenched fist grew bright red.

  I was going to die.

  Then, along with my reflection in his visor, I saw something else. A tiny speck that seemed to grow larger, and larger, and larger, until…was that a…person?

  Something—or somebody—landed on the white hulk feet-first, knocking the monster flat onto his back. A parachute fluttered to the ground behind me. Like a whirling dervish, this strange person pulled something out of a knapsack. It glittered in the sun. And before I knew what was going on, I saw that a hole had been cut in the monster’s visor.

  This intruder stepped back. I couldn’t see his face, just a mop of auburn hair. The monster struggled to its feet, eyes glaring hatred through his shorn visor.

  “Hey, smokey,” the stranger said. It was a girl’s voice! “Eat this.”


  She tossed a liquid through the visor, which splashed all over the monster’s red face. He began to scream, with the same mist and blisters appearing as when he’d punched the freezer.

  “Come on, Zeke!” the girl cried out.

  “Wait, who—”

  She grabbed me by the wrist, and soon we were both sprinting through the woods.

  “The liquid nitrogen won’t last long,” the girl said. “It’s an irritant. Like using pepper spray on a normal person.”

  She could run much, much faster than me. My lungs were sucking air. She didn’t seem to even be breaking a sweat.

  The girl looked to be about my age. She wore a tight, black uniform-style outfit, molded to her toned body. Her hair was auburn, tied up in the back, and her eyes were a steely blue. There was no fear in them. I tripped on a root. She had to help me up. Yeah, it was pretty clear who the leader of this pack was (hint: not Zeke).

  After about ten minutes of running—which I’m pretty sure was the longest single amount of time I’ve ever spent running—we came to a clearing.

  “There’s not much time,” the girl said. She slung off her knapsack and pulled out some sort of belt-and-strap contraption. She handed me a pair of underwear.

  “Why are you giving me underwear?” I said.

  “They’re not underwear, stupid. It’s a harness. Put it on. Your legs go through the strap holes.”

  “Right. Of course. A harness. I knew that.” I put my legs through the straps and buckled the harness around my waist. “Great, now what?”

  “Now,” she said, pulling me up against her, “we connect.” She snapped a few buckles together, and suddenly my harness was connected to hers.

  “I’m not sure if I feel comfortable with this.”

  “Would you feel more comfortable with a fist about three thousand degrees Celsius ramming through your nose with enough force to incinerate your brain stem?”

  “No. That would be decidedly less comfortable,” I said.

  “Smart kid. Now, hang on.” The girl pressed a button on a wristband and spoke into it. “Thirty-seven point five north, eighty-two point two west. Go.”

  “Wait…who are you?”

  “I’m Sparrow.”

  Sparrow pressed another button on her wristband, and a rope line shot into the air, attached to some sort of flashing red balloon. A signal The rope rose high into the air, a faint gray strand in the orange of early morning. Once the rope went taut, I heard the deafening noise of a plane approaching us. Louder than I’d ever heard a plane before.

  I looked up. A plane was approaching, barely a hundred feet off the ground. And this wasn’t your normal passenger plane, but what looked to be a small aircraft. There was no cockpit, nothing for anyone to see out of. It was unmanned. Cool.

  A pair of scissorlike talons emerged from the front of the plane, which was flying at the same altitude as the balloon. I understood what Sparrow’s plan was.

  “This can’t be a good idea,” I said.

  “Stop worrying. I’ve done this a hundred times.”

  I turned my head around to look at her. “Who are you?”

  Before she could answer, I heard a crashing sound and the white hulk appeared in the clearing. He was wielding a tree trunk the size of most motorboats. And the tree trunk was on fire. I could see blisters and red pus running down his face through the broken visor. And not that I had much experience with it, but I had to think that anytime somebody came at you wielding a giant flaming tree trunk, it wasn’t a good thing.

  “Uh, Sparrow…” I said, turning back. There was a slight trace of fear in her eyes. It didn’t exactly make me feel better.

  The monster ran toward us, with the tree pulled back like a baseball bat. Then, just as he swung his weapon, the plane caught hold of our rope line and yanked us high into the air. I felt a gust of wind as the massive tree trunk missed bashing my legs in by about a millimeter.

  We were whisked away, dangling by the line as the plane tore through the air. My hair flapped about as I watched the ground disappear below us. The harness held tight, and thankfully I’d already thrown up all the spaghetti, because I don’t think the human body—or at least my body—was built for this.

  Sparrow pressed another button on her wristband and the rope began to recoil, pulling us up toward the plane.

  “Stay calm,” Sparrow said. “We have a lot to talk about.”

  “Right. Yeah. Lots to talk about. Hey, um, Sparrow?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is there supposed to be a giant flaming tree trunk flying at us?”

  Sparrow looked down. She saw what I saw. A giant flaming tree trunk flying at us. I could tell by her lack of response that this wasn’t an everyday occurrence.

  “Watch out!” she cried, twisting our attached bodies out of the way. The trunk barely missed us—but slammed into the plane’s right-side engine, causing an explosion that sent metal and wood flying all around us.

  The loss of the engine caused the plane to bank to the left. I heard myself scream as the swirling plane dragged us with it, black exhaust smoke enveloping us.

  “We’re going down!” Sparrow shouted.

  Not something you like to hear from your supposed rescuer.

  The plane kept swirling about, as we hung from the rescue rope like a pair of fish at the end of a crazy person’s reel.

  “We need to cut loose!” said Sparrow. “I can’t…I can’t reach it!”

  “Reach what?” I yelled.

  “In my boot, there’s a knife. We need to cut the cord!”

  “Won’t we, like, fall to our deaths?”

  “How is that different from what we’re doing now?” She had a fair point. “See if you can reach it. Hurry, Zeke!”

  I doubled over, the harness across my stomach preventing me from reaching too far. I could see the handle of a knife protruding from a sheath in Sparrow’s boot. I had to reach it; otherwise we would go down in flames with the destroyed plane.

  “Sparrow in!” the girl said into her wristband. “Subject has been acquired, but we are going down. Repeat, we are going down.”

  The plane was spiraling out of control. Below us, trees spun like a whirlpool, and for about the umpteenth time today I felt nauseous. I could touch the handle of the knife with my finger—but couldn’t reach far enough to grip it.

  We were running out of time. The plane was going down.

  “What’s taking so long?” Sparrow shouted, her words barely registering above the noise.

  “I can’t reach it,” I said. There was only one way to save our lives. I hoped Sparrow was as strong as she looked. “I need you to hold on to me.”

  “What? You’re snapped in.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m going to unhook myself from you.”

  “Are you crazy?” she said.

  “Are you strong enough?”

  “Under normal circumstances, yes. With enough g-forces to tear the stripes off a zebra, I don’t know.”

  “Well, either way, if I don’t do this, we’re both a splotch on the ground somewhere. Grab my pants. I’m going to lean over.”

  I waited until Sparrow had clutched my waist tightly. Then I took a deep breath, telling myself, This is just like Space Mountain. This is just like Space Mountain. Of course, I avoided thinking the part about how on Space Mountain you’re shackled in with that massive metal bar to keep you from falling off the ride.

  I unsnapped the first hook that connected me to Sparrow. I keeled forward…but she caught me. Then I unhooked the second, lurching forward even more. My head and most of my body were now tilted toward the ground. I lunged again for the knife, gripping it with my thumb and forefinger. Still not enough. It was wedged in there good and tight.

  “Last one!” I shouted.
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  “You’re crazy!” she said. This coming from a girl who had just parachuted onto a superhuman monster and then tried to have us rappelled into the air by an unmanned aircraft. Yeah. I was clearly the crazy one in this equation.

  I unhooked the last clasp and felt myself suddenly free-falling. Then I stopped. Sparrow had me. But from the noises she was making, it wasn’t for very long.

  I reached down and pulled the knife free. It was a big, scary-looking thing with a serrated edge. My dad once freaked out when I bought a Swiss Army knife. If he’d seen this baby, his head would have exploded.

  “You’re going to need to do it!” she shouted. “If I let go, you’ll fall!”

  That was all the convincing I needed. Hoisting myself up, careful not to slice anything human, I reached up high and placed the serrated edge against the rope.

  “Nice and easy and—” Sparrow said, but before she could finish, I’d made one quick slice right through the line, and suddenly we were hurtling toward the ground.

  “Hang on to me!” she shouted. I clasped my hands around Sparrow’s waist. There were rocks and trees and road and cars directly beneath us. I didn’t really want to know what it would feel like to hit any one of them at that speed. The wind whipped at my hair, my cheeks flapping with the air pressure. We clung to each other like two stapled pieces of paper.

  “Three, two, one, now!” Sparrow pulled a cord on her knapsack, and a bright yellow parachute opened above us. Our fall was halted. The parachute caught the wind. We whooshed over the cars and the woods, heading right for…an open lake.

  Down, down, down we went, until the parachute splashed down in the water. I swam to the surface, gasping for air. I didn’t see anyone else, just the parachute spread out across the lake.

  “Sparrow!” I cried out. Had she come up? Had the impact knocked her unconscious? I dove back under the water, searching frantically in the murky gloom. I could barely see five feet in front of me. There was no way I could cover enough of the lake to find her. Where could she be?

  “Sparrow!” I yelled again, only this time I was underwater and nearly puked up a gallon of the stuff when I got to the surface. No yelling underwater, Zeke.