Masters of Disaster Read online

  Meanwhile, Reed kicked and twisted free of his pants and the monster that had him by his back pocket. He fell in the dirt, rolled twice and crouched in the darkness, frantically looking around for whatever had grabbed him and then had, just as suddenly, disappeared.

  “I’m free,” he assured Riley and Henry, certain they were frantic with fear for him. “Don’t worry. I got away.”

  He stood, pantsless, trying to catch his breath and figure out which way to trot back to Henry and Riley. Before he could move, though, something slithered out of the darkness and wrapped around his bare leg, holding tight. He looked down and saw what he thought was a gray anaconda, about half a foot thick.

  “Hey,” he called to Henry and Riley, suddenly and insanely calm, “a second monster thing just grabbed me. It’s got me by the leg. I’m not free anymore.”

  Then the gray snakelike thing yanked him into the brush near the riverbank and the calm deserted him and he screamed, “Henreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

  Riley cast the flashlight beam toward the river, where he and Henry saw a half-naked Reed being swung through the air and then plunged back under the surface of the water, then up again, then under again, then up. Between dunks in the muddy pee-water, he screamed: “Call [dunk] nine [dunk] one [dunk] one!”

  In the weak glow of the penlight, Henry and Riley could see only a gray wall and one bright eye behind Reed.

  The tiger, which had swung his head to watch Reed, turned back to the two boys, cough-growled again and moved forward, putting his front paws on Henry’s shoulders and licking the top of his head with a rough, wet tongue. Then the tiger nuzzled the side of Henry’s face, looking for all the world like an enormous house cat.

  “Man, he seems to like you,” Riley said. “Or maybe he’s just tasting you. No, he’s definitely being friendly; that doesn’t look like a hungry kind of licking. Freaky, though, huh? To run into a tiger in the woods of surburban Cleveland? Not as weird as the thing that’s got Reed, though.”

  About then Reed broke away from what he was thinking must be the sinister Boy-Eating, Water-Dwelling Snake Creature of Cleveland. Reed clambered up the riverbank and hit the ground running full-speed, at what Riley’s report later estimated was 37.2 miles per hour. He crashed into hanging limbs, tree trunks, anthills, rocks and bushes, leaving thick clouds of doody odor in his wake and emitting bloodcurdling screams that echoed in the darkness.

  As Henry and Riley and, of course, the tiger stood listening to Reed’s terrified bellows, which were becoming more and more distant, a stocky man in khaki pants and a T-shirt that proclaimed EAT PLANTS, NOT ANIMALS suddenly emerged from the darkness. He was carrying a huge flashlight and leading a hyena on a leash.

  “I’m Amazing Dave, owner of Amazing Dave’s Wild Animal Show. We’re traveling around the Midwest. A couple of cages got unlocked by mistake and some of our troupe wandered away. This is Mizzen, my hyena, and I think she ate your buddy’s pants before I caught her. You’ve already met Nick here—and I thank you for not scaring him, he’s kind of timid. Before he started running around yelling like that, your friend was playing in the water with Simon the elephant. Simon has a game with his handler where he dunks him underwater; he thinks everybody likes to play.”

  Dave stuck his fingers in his mouth and let loose with a piercing whistle. They heard a thumping splash and some crashing of bushes and Simon lumbered out of the darkness. He draped his trunk around Riley’s shoulders and turned to watch Nick kiss Henry’s scalp.

  “They seem to like people.” Riley petted the elephant’s shoulder. “I mean they didn’t, you know, like, eat us. Like one might normally expect from wild animals.”

  Dave smiled. “They’re very affectionate and used to being around people. Mizzen here particularly likes chocolate—did that other boy have candy bars in his pockets? That may be why she grabbed his pants. And then ate them. Sorry about that.”

  “We weren’t supposed to bring anything with us for the weekend camping trip I planned, but Reed does like chocolate….” Henry trailed off, realizing how self-righteous he sounded. “We were practicing wilderness survival.”

  “Since our animals sort of messed up your camping trip, on behalf of Amazing Dave’s Wild Animal Show, I’d like to invite you to stay with us this evening.”

  Reed’s screams were growing fainter and fainter. Henry cupped an ear with his palm, listening intently, then shook his head. “We’d like to, we really would. But we’d better go after Reed. He sounds like he’s halfway to Canada.”

  “Some other time, then,” Dave said. “You can meet the other animals. I have a howler monkey named Pixie that your running friend would probably enjoy—they sound exactly alike.”

  Henry and Riley didn’t catch Reed in the woods. By following the sound of his screams, they finally found him on the outskirts of town, hiding in some bushes next to a farm implement dealer.

  “I don’t want to complain or whine or anything,” Reed said from underneath a lilac bush, “but man, that was some pretty wild stuff back there. First off, that furry laughing bear thing tried to eat my butt, and then that gigantic snake thing tried to drown me. It was kind of like that time in kindergarten when Dwight Hauser and I were taking swimming lessons together and he used me as a flotation device, only I didn’t. Float, that is.”

  “You were amazingly brave,” Riley assured Reed, and dragged him out from under the lilac bush.

  “You think?” Reed looked thoughtful. “Is that what brave feels like?”

  “Yup,” Henry said. “It’s kind of like sheer terror, only with a whole lot of adrenaline. And a happy ending.”

  Henry gave Reed his jacket to tie around his waist and cover what was left of his underwear. They started walking home in the darkness.

  “This report,” Riley said, “ought to be a corker.”

  “It could have been worse,” Reed said as he trudged along behind Henry and Riley, his voice scratchy and raw from approximately three and a half miles of screaming. “I didn’t wind up completely covered in doody this time. I lost my pants, but I saved my underwear. Or most of it. And I escaped from a scary thing that ate my pants, and got away from another scary thing that wanted me dead. Or at least really clean. How did you guys get away from that tiger, anyway?”

  “Luck,” Henry said. “Just luck. All the planning in the world, men, can’t compare to perfectly timed good luck.”

  4

  Night of the Living Sludge

  “Men,” Henry announced to Reed and Riley during lunch the next week, spritzing air freshener in Reed’s direction because he still smelled a little funky, “we are going to spend the night in a Dumpster.”

  Reed grabbed the air freshener and shot it back at Henry. “I still say I’m not the only one who smells bad; you must have stepped in tiger poo or else the tiger spit reacted with your shampoo. Did you just say you want us to sleep in a garbage can?”

  Riley pushed aside his soup and pulled out his notebook to start outlining Henry’s new plan.

  “This was not originally on my list of possible activities to pursue,” Henry confessed, gesturing to his yellow legal pad. “But I was sitting in Investigative Science this morning listening to Ms. Trudy’s lecture about the environment when I realized that scientific experimentation is the Highest Form of Discovery and Personal Growth. To learn, to find, to know—to use science to uncover mysteries. What could be more exciting and interesting than that?”

  “And you think spending the night surrounded by garbage is scientific?” Riley asked.

  “Sure. Haven’t you ever wondered about the contents of Dumpsters and trash cans and garbage buckets and wastepaper baskets?”

  “No,” Reed said. “I have never once thought about what gets thrown away.”

  “Neither had I. And I can’t believe we’ve overlooked something so essential and meaningful. Besides, up to now our activities have been Lacking in Practical Application, not to mention Cultural Significance. This task will lead us to
ward not only getting science scholarships for college but also saving the world, one garbage heap at a time.”

  Reed looked doubtful and went back to his sandwich. But Riley pulled out the catalog for a local university that he carried in his backpack because he believed in being prepared for every eventuality. He flipped to the section on scholarships.

  “Henry’s right. There’s a scholarship contest for”—Riley began to read—“‘the study of environmental protection by middle school students. The requirements: undertaking an original experiment, which must be totally self-directed, depending completely on the support and guidance of one’s peers, and the submission of a paper detailing the hypothesis, experiment, results and conclusions, as well as suggestions for bettering society.’” He looked up. “We could totally do this. I want to see what happens. I’m in.”

  Henry said, “Yes! This is about your future, men. I knew this idea was perfect for us. I’m glad we’re all in agreement.” He wrinkled his nose and spritzed air freshener in Reed’s direction again. “Now, about the division of labor—”

  “Let me guess.” Reed folded his arms. “You’re doing all the idea-making and hypothesizing and Riley here is writing up the scholarship application afterward, which leaves me to be the one to actually sleep with the garbage.”

  “Oh, you won’t be sleeping,” Henry said, “you’ll be too busy collecting specimens. And it won’t be all night. You just need to scoop up a few samples of different kinds of waste for us to catalog and identify and experiment upon. That part we’ll all do together.”

  “I don’t know why we can’t do the whole collection thing together, too. I already smell baby doody every minute of every day. I think the contents of that diaper got slammed up into my brain and the river pee burned into me on a cellular level because, when I sweat in gym class, I smell it really bad.”

  “See?” Henry nodded. “You’re the ideal candidate for this part of the project. And, if it makes you feel any better, I’m going to be gathering specimens from the recycling bins at the same time.”

  Reed looked satisfied and Riley carefully penciled into his notes, “Reed: rancid garbage. Henry: old newspapers.”

  Henry continued: “There’s a huge Dumpster outside school that we can use for our research—just think of all the good stuff from the home ec kitchens. We’re in luck, too, because the eighth-grade science section is covering dissection this week, starting with frogs and working up to fetal pigs, so the science labs will throw away lots of interesting garbage. Furthermore, I happen to know from eavesdropping on the cafeteria ladies while I was in the lunch line that the new and improved super-nutritional menu is not meeting with approval from the student body and the disposal rate is unacceptably high.”

  “Um, excuse me.” A soft voice broke into their conversation. They looked up and saw Marci Robbins standing next to their table, blushing furiously. “I wasn’t trying to listen in on your conversation, but I happen to know that Ms. Meyers, the art teacher, is working on creating a new kind of biodegradable modeling clay with her classes and it’s not going well. Or maybe too well. Statues are rotting while the students make them.”

  The only thing more astonishing than being helped out in their plan was being talked to by Marci Robbins, who was so painfully shy that she hardly ever spoke in class.

  “Hey, thanks, Marci, that’s good stuff,” Henry said.

  “A perfect wet-to-dry ratio,” Riley said, nodding.

  “Do you want to come with us?” Reed asked hopefully.

  “Oh, no.” Marci looked horrified. Or terrified. The boys couldn’t tell. “I just, well, wanted to be helpful. Good luck with your project and, um, the whole odor thing you’ve got going here. I think your idea sounds fascinating.” She practically ran out of the lunchroom.

  “That’s the most words I’ve ever heard from Marci in all the years we’ve been going to school together,” Reed said, looking after her as she fled.

  Riley nodded. “She’s good people.”

  “Let’s meet this evening after dinner and get to work,” Henry said.

  “Today is always your favorite day of the week to start a plan.” Reed sighed.

  “You might stop stinking if we don’t get going this evening, and that would be a waste of perfectly good stench,” Henry said before he and Riley put their heads together to reread the experiment standards and protocols in the catalog.

  “Well, sure, when you put it that way.” Reed carried his lunch bag over to the trash, dropped it in, peered down and said into the bin, “See you later.”

  * * *

  Henry and Riley were pacing next to the Dumpster outside the cafeteria that evening, waiting for Reed to show up. They had told their parents they were meeting at the library to work on a science project, which was mostly true and more likely to be agreed to than asking for permission to go Dumpster diving.

  Finally, they heard a rustling noise from the darkness and turned to see Reed hurrying toward them. He was wearing a rain poncho and waterproof trousers reaching from his armpits to attached rubber boots.

  “Good thinking, Reed,” Henry said. “I should have mentioned protective gear. I like the way you wrapped your entire body in plastic cling film before you put your clothes on—that was smart, because you can’t, after all, be too safe. You didn’t, by any chance, ask your mother when your last tetanus shot was, did you? Not”—he hurried on—“that you’ll need it, but it’s always good to know.”

  Henry slapped a headlamp from his dad’s last camping trip onto Reed’s forehead as Riley slid a backpack over Reed’s shoulders. He’d filled it with small glass vials and Ziploc bags from his home science kit. Then Henry handed Reed a plastic bucket with a lid for scooping up the mushy bottom layer from the Dumpster, and Riley gave him a stick to stir the more interesting garbage around.

  “Now, remember,” Henry instructed Reed, “we need a wide sample—solids, liquids, whatever that oozy, sludgy stuff is leaking out the bottom. Don’t come out until you’ve filled the tubes and jars and Ziploc bags and that bucket with research material. I’m heading over to the recycling bin to gather a selection, and Riley’s going to crawl in through the window of the science lab that I propped open with a textbook earlier today and get started on the report. You and I will meet up back here in one hour, at precisely twenty-one hundred hours, with our specimens and head to the lab to start the experiments together.”

  Reed sighed, pulled his uncle’s scuba mask over his eyes and nose, adjusted the painting mask he’d found in the garage over his mouth, yanked on the yellow rubber gloves his mother used to do the dishes, and climbed into the Dumpster. He was about to ask Riley to check him for exposed sections of skin when Henry flipped the lid shut and Reed was plunged into total darkness. He heard Riley’s and Henry’s footsteps getting fainter.

  He hadn’t been in the Dumpster three seconds when he knew he wasn’t alone.

  He reached up and flipped the switch on the headlamp. Eyes shone at him from the other end of the Dumpster. The eyes were yellow.

  He moved his head so the light no longer hit what he decided was either a very large rat or a very small rhino. In either case, the garbage-eating beast stayed at the other end, and Reed decided to focus on collecting trash as quickly as he could while hoping the rhino-rat didn’t have family and friends in the Dumpster. The thing looked, Reed thought, a little like Dwight Hauser, with the same kind of hulking presence and small, mean eyes. Except he’d bet the rhino-rat had a better personality. Bacterial fungus, he thought, had a better personality and made more interesting company than Dwight Hauser.

  The first thing he saw when he looked down was food from the cafeteria. My mother, he thought, would have an absolute fit if she knew how many vegetables got thrown away from the lunch trays.

  “If you don’t eat your vegetables,” she said at every meal, “and chew them properly, you’ll lose your teeth. Then your thinking will become muddled, causing you to forget how to spell and do basic m
ath, after which you’ll flunk out of school. Without a proper education, you will never get a decent job, and sooner or later you can count on winding up in prison or living in a Dumpster.”

  He heard a new sound, whispered “Call 9-1-1” to make himself feel better and tried to convince himself it was merely the rhino-rat, busily eating disposed-of vegetables in order to get big and strong as it sat quietly off to the side, watching Reed collect garbage.

  He carefully bagged seven blackened carrots, three moldy snow peas, a clump of corn Niblets that hung together mysteriously and two chicken nuggets that squirmed with something small, white and alive. He tossed a sandwich crust at the rhino-rat and then pawed through the first level of garbage to the next. He plucked several frog carcasses off the top of the layer and hoped they were from the biology lab and not the lunchroom. He grabbed a clump of something that looked like what the plumber had pulled from his sisters’ shower drain last fall; he carefully sealed it in one of the larger Ziploc bags. He poked a plastic garbage bag with his stick and it burst open, a river of green and runny guinea pig, mouse, white rat, frog and turtle poop from the science labs spreading out across his feet. Oh, good, he thought: doody. Even the rhino-rat looked disgusted and edged farther away from Reed.

  “Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. You’ll just have to bag it for Henry,” he chattered to himself. “Can’t smell a thing, not scared at all, the rhino-rat isn’t going to brush up against me because he’s staying on his side of the Dumpster and I’m way over here, nothing just scurried across my foot, almost done, hate Henry, hate Riley, moving to Fiji …” He found that keeping up a running monologue prevented him from thinking too hard about the squishy goo and gelatinous muck he was getting to as he dug deeper.

  He couldn’t smell anything from behind his scuba and painting masks. The gloves and plastic wrap protected his skin from any direct contact, and he was beginning to feel almost comfortable flipping through the layers of crud and ooze, when he tossed aside a broken cafeteria tray and found a shimmering puddle of slimy, sludgy, not-quite-solid, not-quite-liquid, spongy semiorganic material that seemed to move away from him when he tried to scoop it up. Even the rhino-rat looked surprised at that. Reed searched for additional signs of life in the ooze and then decided that whatever it was, wasn’t actually alive. He closed his eyes, reached down and slid his bucket through the middle of the puddle—it had the consistency of Jell-O and snot. He secured the lid on top. Done.