The Giant Smugglers Read online

  The Northern Lights had been brilliant green that night, and from his boat on Deschambault Lake, the guide claimed to have seen an honest-to-God giant standing on the beach, staring at the bright flickers in the night sky.

  “Sure it was dark, but believe me, that was no Sasquatch,” the guide in the video insisted. “As big as five men, looking right at me! Then he was gone in a flash back into the woods. People can say what they want, but I know what I saw. He was a giant man, not a monster.” The news reporter confirmed that the guide had passed a polygraph test.

  The guide didn’t strike Barton as either a crackpot or an opportunist, so he’d followed up on the story. He got in his car and drove two days to Deschambault Lake. When he found no snapped tree branches or other obvious traces of giant activity, he searched the surrounding countryside, looking for a place where a giant might seek shelter. Four miles away, Barton discovered an abandoned church just tall enough.

  He told Fitzgibbons how he had made his way inside the dark, hollowed-out shell of a church. The pews and altar were long gone, leaving more than enough space to hide a giant. Yearning for a bird’s-eye view, Barton had climbed up the creaky steps to the bell tower. The bell’s frayed rope dangled down. He examined the dusty bell and discovered a pattern that made his heart explode with joy.

  In Fitzgibbons’s office, Barton had carefully unzipped an ungainly canvas bag and unveiled the bell itself. Fitzgibbons remembered his reaction when presented with the evidence: “What does a bell prove? Even if I set aside the comic-book nature of this, you have nothing to back up these claims but a lot of sketchy accounts from country yokels. The migration angle is interesting, but it’s not enough. I’d need something big to convince me.”

  In response, Barton had only smiled and pulled a small penlight from his jacket. A blue beam bathed the bell. The dust in one area of the bell had been carefully brushed away. The light revealed long, wavy red lines swirling in symmetry. They comprised a thumbprint, enormous and unmistakable. “Is that big enough?”

  It was. Lab analysis confirmed the thumbprint’s authenticity; it was even enough to convince Fitzgibbons’s old colleague, Gretchen Gourmand, to approve funding for their research. Her company, Accelerton, saw the potential for incalculable profits if the scientists were able to develop a giant growth hormone. GGH would yield revolutionary—even evolutionary—biotech advances with both civilian and military applications.

  All of Barton’s crazy stories led Fitzgibbons to where he was today, an unlikely Accelerton lab in Richland Center, Wisconsin. He moved to his desk and switched the signal on the monitors, pulling up flickering aerial views of farm fields, tree tops, and, most important, the silo he had visited that morning. Nothing out of the ordinary appeared.

  A centrifuge dinged.

  “How long?” asked Fitzgibbons.

  Barton checked a program on his computer and sighed. “A few hours for preliminary results. If there’s enough viable tissue, I can start synthesizing a biologic immediately.”

  Fitzgibbons nodded. The thumbnail was an exciting but limited find—best-case scenarios indicated Barton could produce only a limited amount of GGH. He looked up at the satellite images, serene aerial views of rural Wisconsin.

  Barton stepped away from a centrifuge to join his boss. He studied the farms and surrounding countryside and let out a frustrated sigh. “Just a bunch of cows doing cow stuff.”

  “Let’s stay on it. In fact, I’d like you to task another bird or two. Whoever’s helping these giants clearly has more than one location to hide them. There must be something we’re missing.”

  6

  Charlie stood on his pedals and pumped like crazy to make it to school on time. He was more scared about being tardy again than of Fitz’s threats. His principal, Mr. Dobbs, would call his mom, his mom would ground him for a month, and that meant seeing the giant again would get a lot more difficult.

  Charlie threw his bike on the rack and sprinted through the front doors of Richland Center Middle School. There was Dobbs, standing outside the office, just waiting to catch the late kids. He looked at his watch and raised an eyebrow as the first bell rang. Charlie had made it just in time!

  He hustled to his locker to stash his backpack and then off to class, plopping down in his seat way before the second bell. He saw a bunch of the jocks arguing about fantasy football like it was the most important thing in the world. Like usual, they didn’t notice Charlie, even though he was sitting on bigger news than any football score. Of course Charlie wasn’t about to spill—if he said anything about the giant, the whole town would be all over the warehouse. He was going to keep the secret to himself, at least for a while.

  “Crazy loss last night, CUGoneByeBye.”

  Charlie turned around.

  There was Adele Hawkins, Adelicious from Total Turbo, in the seat behind him. She was scrolling through some text-heavy message board on a handheld tablet—she’d always been the class computer dork, a distinction she wore as a badge of honor. But something weird had happened to her over the summer. Her hair, which had been in braids for as long as he’d known her, was down now. He thought it looked kind of awesome. She got tired of waiting for Charlie to respond and started talking again.

  “Fitz just got lucky. He’s weird.”

  The name Fitz brought fresh reminders of the bigger kid’s threats. Charlie tried to play it casual. “You know him?”

  “I babysit for his next-door neighbors. He just moved here. Jamie Fitzgibbons is his real name, but he hates being called Jamie.”

  Charlie thought back to Total Turbo the night before, when he’d mocked the bully’s name. He was glad Fitz had no idea who CUGoneByeBye really was. “Prefers Fitz, I guess,” Charlie nodded. “As in ‘fits of rage.’”

  Adele giggled, and Charlie felt his cheeks turn red. He never knew what to say when girls laughed at his jokes. Which, if he was being honest, didn’t happen too often.

  “I know how you can do better in the corners,” Adele said, her voice dropping to a whisper. She looked around to make sure no one was listening and leaned in close to Charlie. “I found this message board, totally underground, nobody knows about it. You can’t even Google it. There’s a bunch of hardcore Turbo freaks on there. If you’re cool, they’ll share lots of game secrets with you.”

  “What, like codes?”

  “Codes, cheats, driving techniques,” Adele whispered. “Walk-throughs, hints, even backdoor hacks! It’s a gold mine. Check it out.” She spun her tablet around, and Charlie leaned in closer. Adele was right: The site was crazy. There was insider information on everything from acceleration mods to tire saturation. She paged through to a thread on cornering, his Achilles’ heel in the race he lost to Fitz.

  Sure enough, there was a technique called “heel-toe braking,” a way to brake though a corner while still revving the engine. To pull it off, you controlled both the accelerator and brake with your right foot and the clutch with your left. With toes on the gas and heel on the brake, you could come out of the turn like a bullet. An online video showed just how effective the move could be.

  “Sweet—I’ll try it tonight,” said Charlie.

  “Wish I could see how it works. I got a bunch of new tricks I wanted to try myself, stuff even you haven’t thought of.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  Her voice sagged. “I’m taking Doug and Dennis to the fair.”

  “Oh man.” Charlie knew all about Doug and Dennis Perry, nine-year-old twins who lived about three blocks over from his apartment. A month earlier, the two of them had holed up in their tree fort with a water-balloon launcher and conducted a fierce assault on Seminary Street traffic. It took two squad cars to get them to stop and come down.

  “I swore I wouldn’t sit for them again,” sighed Adele. “Then their parents offered to pay me double because everybody’s so afraid of what the monsters will do.”

  Charlie winced. The Perry twins had twice the mischief-making power of his brother, Tim,
and he’d destroyed sitters when he was their age.

  The second bell rang, signaling the start of class.

  “You going to the fair?” Adele whispered.

  “Yep. My brother works out there,” Charlie griped. “I have to go.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you?”

  Charlie tried to untie his uncooperative tongue. “S-s-sure,” he stammered, sounding like the giant trying out an unfamiliar phrase. The teacher began talking, giving him an excuse to turn around.

  The rest of the morning crawled by as he waited for a chance to test the range of the walkie-talkies. Finally, lunch arrived. Charlie took his backpack into the cafeteria, slammed his crummy sandwich, and split for outside.

  The usual game of touch football was under way on the grassy field behind the school. All-time quarterback Mr. Spees, the math teacher, shouted the snap count “Go nuts” to send eager receivers out for passes. Charlie played it cool as he slid by. His plan was to hide out behind the equipment shed. If somebody saw him talking on an overgrown walkie-talkie, the ridicule would be endless.

  He made it to the secret spot in no time, then peered around the shed to make sure no one had followed. He unzipped his backpack, pulled the antenna up on the walkie, and turned it on.

  “Check one, check one. You there?”

  “Charlie?” The giant’s voice crackled through almost immediately.

  Charlie hit the Talk button. “Yep, man, it’s me. This works awesome!”

  “Smell!”

  So much for formalities, Charlie thought. “Something smells?”

  “Bad.”

  Charlie remembered the smelly box in a corner of the warehouse, but he didn’t think that was what the giant meant. “Is the smell coming from outside?”

  “Yep.”

  Charlie chuckled. “I know, right? That’s Donovan Dairies.” The dairies emptied some kind of steam into the air every day and it stank like crazy. Since they moved close by, Charlie smelled it all the time. It was even worse in the summer, when it got hot. “Has something to do with making cheese. You know what cheese is?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re in Wisconsin, dude. I’ll have to get you some.” He looked around the corner and saw a group of kids chasing a kickball in the shed’s direction. “I gotta go. Somebody’s coming.”

  The giant understood. “Secret.”

  “I’ll be there soon.” Charlie clicked off, pushed the antenna down, and stuffed the walkie into his backpack. The bell rang, and Charlie followed the kids back into the school.

  Next was sixth-hour study hall. Mr. Bachman, the monitor, sat at the front of the room behind an old wooden desk. He had three rules, which were written on a sign hanging on the wall above his head: No talking, no gum, no phones. He started every period by pointing at the sign, then scribbling in a Sudoku book.

  Charlie didn’t have any homework, so he eased his phone out of his pocket. On a whim, he searched “giants” on the Internet, expecting to find some Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tales. Instead, he uncovered centuries’ worth of people claiming that they had had encounters with giants. How had he not known this before? In the 1600s, thirty-foot-tall giants supposedly stomped around Australia. Others claimed a race of giants lived in the wild outside Chile during the eighteenth century. Giant kings ruled Peru, according to some stories.

  Even today, there were plenty of people claiming to see giants. Giants in Kentucky. Giants in Mexico. Even giants in Wisconsin! Many of the stories sounded sort of crazy, but Charlie had a pretty big reason to believe them now.

  “Rule three, no phones,” warned Mr. Bachman in a stern voice. Charlie wasn’t the only kid who had snuck his out, and they all rushed them back into their pockets. Mr. Bachman hadn’t looked up from his Sudoku puzzle.

  The rest of the day passed by slowly, but finally the bell rang. Charlie sprinted to his locker, grabbed his backpack, and tore out of the school. It was giant time. Charlie pedaled as fast as he ever had. Adrenaline drove his legs, and his bike sped along streets like never before. He was just about to cross over to Hillside Drive.

  And that’s when he saw him.

  Their eyes met. His only hope was if Fitz didn’t recognize …

  But Fitz started his chrome-frame racing bike up the hill, his powerful legs pumping with purpose. White-knuckled fists gripped the handlebars, eyes locked on Charlie.

  “Hey! Hey, you!” Fitz pointed his meaty index finger. “Game over!”

  7

  Panic had Charlie by the throat as he pedaled up Hillside Drive. The street was steep and the incline wore on his legs. He stood to push harder as his bike lurched up the tough grade in spurts. His lead over Fitz was evaporating by the second, and it didn’t take long for him to come to a realization: There’s no way I can outrun him! He’ll catch me before I can even get to the Siefkes’ house.

  Across the street, Charlie spotted a poorly paved path that ran down the hill’s front face to the Pine River. A wooden-planked suspension footbridge with rope webbing on the sides spanned the black water. Years of cycling around Richland Center had taught Charlie that the footbridge was a lousy place for a bike, but it was especially difficult for one bike to trail another. The lead bike shook the rickety suspension bridge, causing the boards behind to hop up and down. Fitz’s bike wouldn’t handle a rough ride as well as smooth pavement. It’s my only chance! He launched the BMX onto the path.

  Only twenty feet down the trail, Charlie found himself going too fast for pedaling to do any good. He held the pedals even and just concentrated on coasting. The bike staggered when his front tire collided with a stray hunk of asphalt broken up from the trail. The chunk went sailing. His front tire veered to the right, but Charlie went with the motion instead of over-steering.

  His BMX shuddered as Charlie eased the bike back on the trail, and it smoothed out again. He took the opportunity to look over his shoulder. Fitz had just plunged his racer down the path.

  Charlie hit the bridge and pedaled hard, building maximum speed and timing his next move. About one-third of the way across, he leaned ahead on his BMX, gripped the handlebars tight, and lifted the back tire up in the air in a donkey kick. Then he brought the back of the bike down as hard as he could. It cost him a lot of speed, but he was willing to sacrifice it.

  Fitz was riding all-out as his bike hit the bridge. His front tire jumped all over the place, trying to stay true on the herky-jerky boards that Charlie’s ploy had set in motion. Fitz couldn’t hold the thin tire straight, and Charlie heard a yell.

  He glanced back to see Fitz’s bike lying on the boards, its front wheel spinning in the air. He skidded to a halt, raised his fists to the sky, and let out a triumphant “Yeah!”

  He stood on the pedals, ready to ride again, when his nagging conscience made him look back one more time. Fitz was nowhere near the bike. Then Charlie heard a shout from the underside of the bridge.

  “Help!”

  Filled with a new kind of dread, Charlie pedaled over to the edge. Dark water swirled below as a dam loomed in the distance. Its concrete cap was crumbling at the edges from years of holding back the Pine River. He leaned out and peered down alongside the bridge.

  There was Fitz, hanging from the boards on the other side of the torn rope. He’d wiped out and crashed through the webbing. “You gotta help me,” Fitz pleaded. “I can’t hold on much longer.”

  Charlie couldn’t just leave. He rode over to the ripped-up webbing, jumped off his bike, and threw off his backpack. Kneeling down, he extended his arm. “Give me your hand,” he said, not even sure he could pull up the bigger Fitz without being dragged over the side. Charlie could smell the kid’s sweaty Hornets Football T-shirt.

  “You did that on purpose,” Fitz accused, his strained, pimpled face turning crimson as he stared up.

  “Of course,” Charlie admitted. “You were going to kill me.” He stretched his hand out farther to the struggling boy.

  Fitz coughed and spat from the back of his throa
t in Charlie’s face.

  Charlie recoiled in disgust and landed on his behind. He wiped away thick saliva that smelled like grapes, but grapes that had been in somebody’s mouth. Fitz’s meaty fingers strained white as they gripped the edge of the bridge. Charlie heard laughing. He watched in horror as Fitz’s head began to rise.

  “You believed I needed your help?” Fitz exclaimed. Then he let out a roar and heaved himself belly-first back up onto the footbridge. “Big mistake!”

  Charlie’s heart sledgehammered in his chest as he grabbed his backpack, jerked his BMX off the ground, and hurtled his leg over the seat. He burned away, standing tall on the pedals. The BMX sailed along the concrete sidewalk that led from the bridge, off the curb, and down Congress Street.

  Fitz cleared the bridge. He had an easy, eerie smile on his face that said, “Nothing can save you now.”

  Charlie eyed construction equipment up ahead, part of the city’s massive dike-building program to remedy a flooding problem. Charlie knew he couldn’t outrun Fitz, but hoped to use the construction mess to slow him down again.

  Adrenaline pumping, Charlie swung at full speed around an orange-striped barricade onto the tough terrain and bunny-hopped the BMX over a pile of metal rebar. He gave the pedals all he had, and the bike’s knobby tires gripped the mushy surface. Let’s see how your racing bike handles this, Jamie! By the time he was well into the heart of the construction, Charlie figured he’d left the bully far behind in the muck.

  But when he turned his head, there was Fitz, flying toward him from a cross street. He had not taken the construction zone bait after all.

  Fitz had learned his lesson on the footbridge about what his bike could and couldn’t do. Playing to its strength—straight-line speed on a good road—he’d headed a longer way around and kept track of Charlie by peeking down side streets. Now Fitz was closing fast. With only the river and little else in front of him, Charlie was running out of room to run.