The Giant Smugglers Page 17

  “Now!”

  “I’m going as fast as I can,” Charlie protested.

  But it wasn’t fast enough for the giant. He pushed the button at the back of the car, and the hinged panel folded down to expose the outside world. In contrast to the colorless clouds overhead, autumnal America streaked by in vibrant golds and greens. They were long gone from Illinois, rolling along a horizon that stretched into forever. This was what the middle of nowhere looked like, and it was beautiful. Bruce stepped out onto the platform, hiked up his tunic, and relieved himself off the back of the train.

  Bruce had it right. To heck with toilets. If it was good enough for the giant, it was good enough for Charlie, who joined his friend on the back of the train. The two christened the tracks, expressing their newfound freedom to the fullest. When they’d finished their business, they shouted out to the plains—no actual words, just whoops that traveled into nowhere with no chance of being heard over the roar of the train.

  Finally, they returned to the car, and Charlie raised the wall. As it shut tight, a clicking sound at the front of the car startled them. Had somebody heard them? Charlie looked around frantically for a place for Bruce to hide, but the car offered no such cover.

  Then the door at the front opened. A white cane with a red tip poked through. Bruce balled his fists, ready to take on a dangerous intruder, but Charlie held up his hand. He’d seen that type of cane before. It was the kind blind people used.

  A large man dressed all in black followed the staff into the car and shut the door behind him. He wore dark sunglasses and a long tangle of white billy-goat whiskers hung from his chin. His cane explored the floor with a wooden tap-tap-tap. Charlie had been right—the man couldn’t see a thing. As long as Bruce kept his mouth shut, he wasn’t in immediate danger of being discovered.

  The man stopped tapping and held very still. “Who’s there?” he croaked in a raspy voice that sounded like Charlie’s Uncle Harvey, a man who smoked too many cigarettes.

  Charlie tried not to breathe.

  “Come on, I know you’re there.” The man rapped the floor with his stick.

  “Who are you?” The words rocketed from Charlie’s mouth. “What are you doing in my car?”

  “Name’s Parran. I’m aiming to take a rest,” he said, revealing a wide smile full of tobacco-stained teeth. He poked his cane in Charlie’s general direction. “This is the sleeper car, ain’t it?”

  Charlie winced. He hadn’t checked the front entrance to ensure it was locked. They were lucky that it had been a blind man who had wandered in. “No, this is a private car,” the boy said, trying to make his voice sound deep and grown-up. Bruce gave him a funny look.

  “That so?” Parran reached into his front pocket and pulled out a toothpick. He rolled it between yellowed fingertips before stashing it in his cheek. “The door was open.”

  “You’re going to have to leave,” warned Charlie, clearing his throat. The deep voice wasn’t working so well. “Sorry.”

  Parran paused as if he was going to argue with Charlie, or perhaps call a porter to sort it out. But instead, he turned and shuffled back the way he came. “Sorry to trouble you, good sir. I’ll show myself out.” He tapped his way through the door, and Charlie locked it tight behind him.

  “Trouble?” Bruce asked.

  “I don’t think so.” Still, it was a close call. Charlie plopped down in the easy chair by the coffee table and pulled out the smugglers’ map, trying to figure out how much longer they’d need to hide on the train. He remembered Wertzie’s time estimates from the night before. “My guess is we’re somewhere in Tennessee, not far from Louisiana. Almost there, big guy.”

  Bruce didn’t respond. He was staring at the pictures on the wall, inching closer for a better look. He reached out, touched an imperceptible seam, and pulled to the side. The wall parted, revealing a hidden compartment. A light snapped on inside. Bruce leaned in, and Charlie got out of the chair. Hanging inside the partition was a second series of framed, faded pictures, ones that were not meant to be seen by just anyone.

  “Whoa,” said Charlie. He gawked at a picture of an unfamiliar giant, bearded and noble, staring up at a towering tree twice his size. The shot captured an eagle leaving its nest, soaring high above the giant. “Where is this?”

  “Home,” Bruce said.

  Other shots included a giant wrapped in some kind of animal skin throwing a spear the size of a small tree, a catch of silvery fish large enough to fill a dump truck, and a close-up shot of a giant woman’s face, smiling and peaceful. A mountain stood in the distance behind her.

  Bruce pointed to the snowy mountainside and let his fingertip linger on the glass. “House.”

  “You lived on that mountain?”

  “Caves,” Bruce responded. He pulled the picture from the wall and carefully pointed out several openings in the mountain, joining them with his finger.

  “A bunch of them, all connected together?”

  “Yep.”

  “Jeez, dude, weren’t you freezing?”

  Bruce smiled and shook his head.

  Charlie imagined the world’s most amazing collection of underground forts, all connected by enormous tunnels. “I’d love to see your caves sometime.”

  Bruce’s brow furrowed. “Gone.”

  “What? How could they just be … gone?”

  “Hank,” the giant explained. “Boom.”

  The old man had talked about blowing up the dam back in Richland Center, so he knew his way around dynamite. And the smugglers were pretty serious about keeping the giants a secret. Charlie guessed that meant making sure nobody could visit their former address. That didn’t mean Bruce had to like it. Charlie hated moving all the time. No place ever felt like home. “Sorry, man. You excited about going to your new place?”

  Bruce thought about that one. His lips tightened, and finally he shrugged. “Big world.”

  Charlie thought about Bruce’s future, secluded and safe with the other giants in a new home but cut off from everything the world had to offer. He had never known about hamburgers or trains or carnival rides before, but he sure seemed to like them. And there was so much more that he had yet to see. “What would you do if you didn’t join up with the other giants? Just … hang out? Watch movies?”

  Bruce’s face brightened. “Sure,” came the matter-of-fact reply.

  Charlie chuckled. “It’s not that easy, man. You can’t just hang all the time. People in my world have to do something, like work or go to school before they get to watch movies…”

  Movies. Of course! It was a crazy idea, but why not? With Bruce, movies wouldn’t need special effects. He was a special effect! A giant who could do martial arts moves? Charlie couldn’t think of anyone who wouldn’t pay money to see that. They were on to something.

  “What?”

  “It probably wouldn’t work.” One of the giant smugglers had to have thought of this idea before and dismissed it for some good reason he hadn’t thought of yet. But why couldn’t Bruce be a movie star? Charlie began to reconsider. The giant was a couple of years older than Charlie, close to the age when Tim started making his own decisions and ran off on his own. “But maybe you could be in the movies!”

  Bruce’s mouth curled up at the corners. “Me?”

  “It wouldn’t be a sure thing,” Charlie said, realizing he really had no idea how someone got into the movie business. “We’d have to go to California, probably, and we’d need some money to get started.”

  “Gold,” offered Bruce. He broke into his fist-pumping dance move, excited that his friend was even considering the idea.

  Charlie had forgotten all about the gold. A stick or two could probably buy a mansion, and Bruce was entitled to his fair share. “What about your parents? Won’t they be worried?”

  “Visit,” Bruce offered as a compromise.

  The boy’s head spun. His own mom would put up a fuss, that was for sure, but with that kind of money, maybe he just could talk her into movi
ng out west. She could leave both her crummy jobs and finally get the big house she deserved.

  “Movies!” the giant insisted. Now that Charlie had planted the idea, Bruce wasn’t going to let it go easily.

  “Movies?” Charlie said again, testing the idea out loud to see if it sounded as crazy as he feared.

  “Movies!”

  “Okay,” the boy said, becoming convinced himself. The giant’s enthusiasm was contagious. “Okay! Let’s do it, man. Let’s get your share of the gold and go to California!”

  31

  The afternoon hours flew by as the train sped to their Louisiana destination. Charlie and Bruce spent the rest of the ride planning the giant’s movie career. And what better place to start than their current adventure? It was a natural. Who wouldn’t want to see a movie about a bunch of giant smugglers when the main part was played by an actual giant? The story wrote itself: Bruce coming to town, Charlie finding him in the warehouse, sneaking out to the drive-in, fighting Giant Fitz in the quarry. Bruce wanted that part changed a little bit—less Giant Fitz hitting him and more him hitting Giant Fitz. Charlie had an idea about spinning Bruce off into a video game: Total Turbo: Giant Trouble. Even if Bruce’s career as an actor didn’t take off, his future as a celebrity was all but assured.

  Finally the train pulled to a stop. Charlie wanted to take a victory lap—it wouldn’t be long now until they collected Bruce’s gold and set off on another adventure, leaving his boring old life behind forever. But when he parted the curtains and looked out the tinted windows, the feeling of triumph deflated to confusion.

  He’d expected to see the Gulf of Mexico or at least a sleepy town deserving of the name “Grand Isle, Louisiana.” Their destination was just a speck on Wertzie’s map, even smaller than Richland Center. But outside, even though it was nighttime, the train yard was bustling with activity. Towering above the dozens of tracks full of freight and passenger cars, Charlie saw brightly lit buildings reaching into the sky. This couldn’t be the end of the line.

  The giant was antsy. “Out?”

  “Not yet.”

  Charlie made a peephole in the space between the thick red curtains, trying to get a sense of what was going on. A tram rumbled past, the back end full of passenger luggage. Stenciled on the vehicle’s side were the words New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal.

  New Orleans?

  Charlie fumbled the map open again. New Orleans was close to Grand Isle—close in the sense that both cities were in the state of Louisiana—but they had to be a hundred miles from their final destination. Wertzie never mentioned anything about the train not going all the way! How were they supposed to cover a hundred miles? That was one heck of a walk, even for Bruce.

  In the space between the curtains, Charlie saw motion near the front of the double-decker car. Someone was snooping around. He closed the drapes just as the lock in the forward door clicked and turned.

  Tim quickly slipped inside and shut the door, locking it behind him. Bruce stuck out a fist for Charlie’s brother to bump, but Tim’s usual crooked grin was nowhere to be found. “What were you guys thinking, running off like that?”

  Charlie was in no mood for lectures, especially after Tim had betrayed him back in Peoria. “What did you think we’d do? Wertzie told us everything! You were going to send me home!”

  Tim shook his head. “Wertzie told you … Wait, what did Wertzie tell you?”

  “That DJ was coming. Don’t act like you didn’t tell him to.” It felt good to call out his brother on his bullcrap for once. It was about time someone did.

  “I can’t believe he told you that.”

  “Wertzie,” agreed Bruce, endorsing the smuggler who’d confided in them.

  “Forget Wertzie,” Tim said, opening a streaming-video app on his phone. “Let’s talk about this.”

  “Movie!”

  “Yep, it’s a movie,” said Tim. “Starring you two dopes. Somebody named Adele found my e-mail and sent me the link. She’s worried sick about you, Charlie.”

  Bruce made kissing noises, and Charlie slugged the giant in the shin as hard as he could. “The link for what?” he asked. He wasn’t surprised that Adele had tracked them down online; it was her specialty.

  In response, Tim pushed “Play.” Charlie and Bruce watched the video, a blurry handheld clip titled Bloomington Bigfoot??? Even though the video was dark and fuzzy, Charlie easily recognized Bruce racing through the apartment parking lot back in Illinois to catch the train. Some guy narrated about how he’d been barbecuing on his balcony when he heard a monster running through the trees and caught it on his phone. It was impossible to tell exactly what it was, but there was definitely something big rumbling past the pickup trucks and mopeds.

  “Me!” said Bruce, excited to see himself on-screen.

  “You can barely see anything,” Charlie countered, his voice defensive. There were only 325 views on the video, anyway. Practically no one had seen it.

  Tim stashed his phone. “Once I saw how close you were to the train, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. The train, Charlie! There’s a reason Hank only uses it for emergencies. Too many people all along the way. How do you know someone hasn’t seen you back here?”

  “Nobody,” protested Bruce. “Careful!”

  “Well,” said Charlie. At this point, there wasn’t much to lose by coming clean. “I did meet a blind guy, some kind of drifter. But he had no idea Bruce was here. Like he said. We’ve been careful.”

  “Careful doesn’t always keep trouble away, Charlie. Remember your friend with the stick?”

  “Dead!” argued the giant.

  “Bruce is right. We saw a tornado coming right at him!”

  “That twister must have chickened out, because Stick-O is very much alive,” said Tim. “Last night he backflipped off a motorcycle going seventy and attacked the Creep Castle!”

  Charlie couldn’t believe the guy had survived the tornado. And he remembered the merciless look in his eye as he was about to zap Charlie in the head. To counter his fear, he puffed out his chest. “Sounds like we made the right decision to get out of there.”

  “Way to go. You snuck off like a real hero,” said Tim, his voice sticky with sarcasm. “But we know someone’s after Bruce. We got to keep him safe until he gets to his new home.”

  “No.”

  Tim looked up at the giant and snorted. “What do you mean, no?”

  “He means he’s not going,” said Charlie. “Not to the place with the rest of the giants.”

  “Where does he think he’s going instead?”

  Charlie swallowed hard. “To California. He’s coming with me. He’s going to be in the movies.”

  “Movies,” Bruce agreed, pointing to Tim’s phone as if the online video was his big debut.

  Tim exhaled and ran his hand over his face. “Charlie. You guys get major props for what you’ve pulled off so far. But you’re in middle school. How exactly do you think this is going to work?”

  “We’re still hammering out the details,” Charlie admitted, the words middle school stinging like a slap across the face. “But we decided. He wants to hang with me in our world. He’s about the same age you were when you left home. So he’s getting his share of the gold in Grand Isle. And he’s not going where you tell him to go.”

  “So you and Bruce are just going to waltz down the streets of Richland Center? Or Hollywood? What do you think people will do when they see him for the first time? Applaud? Or maybe they’ll get big-time scared. What are the odds someone panics and whips out a gun? This isn’t hypothetical, Charlie—you know people are after him, bad people. What happens when your friend with the stick knows just where to find Bruce?”

  The giant made two fists to show that he wasn’t afraid of any man, stick or no stick. Tim rolled his eyes and kept right on talking.

  “There’s one other thing Adele told me—she’s seen Accelerton vans crawling all over Richland Center looking for something. That’s the place where
the other giant’s dad worked, right? I’ve seen the vans myself, right here in this rail yard.” Tim pulled one of the red drapes back an inch. On the other side of the yard, a security vehicle was stationed near a gate where big freight trucks came and went. The green Accelerton logo was stenciled on its side. “Quite a coincidence, huh? Can you guess who they’re looking for?”

  Charlie swallowed hard. Maybe there were a few things he and Bruce hadn’t thought through. But winging it had worked great so far. “We got each other’s backs.”

  “Having fun, hanging out—that’s only one part of being a friend, Charlie,” said Tim. “It’s not just about what’s best for you. What about what’s best for Bruce?”

  “Friend!” The giant crossed his arms. The two of them were in this together, no matter what.

  Tim gave a frustrated laugh and threw up his hands, the sign of a man who could tell he was getting nowhere fast. “Tell you what. You’re going to Grand Isle anyway, right? For the gold, if nothing else?”

  “Yeah, we’re going to Grand Isle,” said Charlie, though he had no idea how they were getting there.

  “Gold.” Bruce was emphatic. He was getting his share.

  “Then let me help you get there. And give all of us some time to think along the way.”

  Charlie looked at Bruce. They had agreed to do this on their own, but grabbing a ride didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Bruce gave the boy a small nod, and Charlie turned back to his brother.

  “Okay, fine. We’ll go with you.”

  “Not with me. Hank has a guy who can help you get out of town. He’s the man down here.” Tim reached into his pocket and pulled out a cheap plastic cell phone, the kind convenience stores sold for twenty bucks. He handed it to Charlie. “My number’s in there in case there’s trouble. Meantime, I’ve got a few things to take care of.”

  That sounded familiar, like the note Tim had left their mother a few years back. “How will Hank’s guy find us?”

  “Oh, he already knows you’re here. He’ll get you out, as long as you don’t go AWOL again.” Tim opened the back door of the car and slipped halfway out. “And Charlie? Think about what I said, okay?”