The Giant Smugglers Read online

  Smells like the stuff you feed the goats at the petting zoo, he thought as he dumped the bag inside the tub. The oats looked dry and unappetizing. Charlie turned on the spigot, soaked the grains down good, and stirred the whole mess up with the oar. He looked up to the giant, but something was wrong, like Charlie hadn’t prepared it right. “What’s the problem? I thought you wanted this.”

  The giant grimaced, then stuck an enormous index finger into the goop. He lifted the viscous slop to his nose and took a tentative sniff. His enormous eyes closed tight as he recoiled from the smell. “Sucks!”

  “It can’t be that bad.” He stuck his own hand into the mushy grain and tried a bit. It was the worst-tasting anything he’d ever eaten.

  The giant looked at Charlie as if he was the dumbest guy in the world. “Sugar!”

  He looked around. “There’s no sugar here.”

  Trying to squeeze his massive arm back down the narrow hallway, the giant repeated his request. “Sugar.”

  Charlie squirted past the giant’s arm to take another look down the hall. Sure enough, there was a fifty-pound bag of sugar, three-quarters full, set just out of the giant’s reach. He dragged it back to the tub.

  “Charlie!” The giant rubbed his hands together.

  Charlie lifted the bag and drizzled sugar crystals across the top. “This ought to help.” The giant snatched the bag. “Hey, what the heck!”

  The behemoth dumped the entire contents into the feed, stuck his big paw into the “oatmeal,” and plopped a sweet glob into his mouth. He sighed with pleasure—that was more like it.

  Charlie stuck in his own hand and tried some. He didn’t think the sugar helped much, but the big guy finished the entire tub in about a minute. He picked up the hose between a massive thumb and forefinger, motioning for Charlie to turn on the water. He did, and the giant drank for a good five minutes. Then he got a funny look in his eye and pointed at something back down the hall.

  “What?” asked Charlie. “You hear someone coming?”

  The giant continued to drink, motioning for Charlie to go ahead and check it out. He turned and looked around the corner. Nothing was there that he hadn’t seen before—just the bags of oats and …

  A hard, cold blast of water hit Charlie in the back of the neck, knocking him forward. He turned and sputtered through the icy spray. The giant was laughing his butt off, working the hose to soak Charlie good. “Knock it off, you big idiot!”

  The wetter Charlie got, the more the giant laughed. The big guy was pretty good at forcing the water in Charlie’s face, pushing him back. Finally, Charlie managed to get to the spigot and turn it off.

  “Come on, man. I didn’t jump down an elevator shaft to get soaked.”

  The giant reached down to turn the spigot back on and broke the entire thing off the wall. Water spurted everywhere, and he danced around like an oversize kid playing in an open fire hydrant. He kicked water in Charlie’s direction.

  Charlie ran for cover under the table, wishing he had some water balloons or something to fight back with. Giants were definitely fun once they’d had a little sugar. He scrambled for the wooden oar and flicked water that was pooling on the floor at the big guy. The giant stumbled backward and almost knocked over the pallet of dynamite.

  “Watch it,” warned Charlie, scuttling across the wet floor looking for something else he could fling at the giant.

  Bits of oats flew from the giant’s teeth with each hysterical guffaw. He scooped up enormous handfuls of water and dropped them on Charlie’s head, like the huge buckets at the water park that dumped a thousand gallons at a time. It was the coldest shower of his life, and the giant kept chucking water over and over. Charlie didn’t mind—he was having a blast—but he was getting a little worried about all the water. There was a good two inches on the floor now and he was pretty sure it was seeping out the door in the back hall into the alley. It wouldn’t be long before someone would wonder where all the water was coming from.

  Charlie tracked the copper pipe that ran from the spigot until he saw the rusted master shut-off across the warehouse. He made a break for the handle, put his full body weight behind the effort, and managed to turn off the torrent.

  “Water!” shouted the giant, pouncing on and destroying Hank’s old chair. Splinters flew everywhere. He reached down to snap the copper pipe and start the fun again.

  “Don’t break it!” shouted Charlie. He looked around the warehouse—it reminded him of the aftermath of a New Year’s Eve party that his brother threw sophomore year when their mom was out of town. In other words, a certifiable disaster zone. Maybe they needed to take it down a notch before someone called the cops. That’s what happened to Tim. “I’ve got something even more fun to do!”

  The giant stopped and cocked his head, as if to say, “I’m listening.…”

  Fun stuff to do. Charlie wracked his brain. What did he do for fun? Total Turbo, which was out of the question. The guy’s thumbs were way too big to work the controls. Eat stuff, which they’d already done. Watch a movie …

  Then the boy remembered Tim’s box of crap, with the dusty old projector and film reels. A movie! The giant would freak out if Charlie could pull it off. He yelled up at the giant. “Hey, I’ll be right back!”

  The giant looked dejected, even guilty, like maybe he shouldn’t have started the water fight after all. “No,” he pleaded. “Stay.”

  Charlie held up his hands. “I’m not mad or anything,” he insisted. “Hang here for a minute and don’t break any more water pipes. I just got to go get something—I’m coming back, promise!”

  The giant collapsed into an empty corner of the room and put his massive hands on his knees.

  In the hallway where he’d found the oats, Charlie discovered the back door that Hank had used a couple of nights before. He was able to unlock it from the inside and most of the water drained into the alleyway and down the sewer. He sprinted back across the street to his apartment. He grabbed the box marked Tim and in no time, he was back across Church Street.

  The grateful giant offered a fist bump.

  He was fascinated by absolutely everything in Tim’s box of crap. Charlie showed him the peekaboo pen first. The giant’s eyes got big as he held the tiny pen upside down and watched the woman’s outdated bikini evaporate like magic. That naughty disappearing trick alone probably could have kept the giant busy for hours—he kept flipping the pen to dress and undress the old-fashioned swimsuit model.

  While the giant was occupied, Charlie set the table upright, positioned the projector, and plugged it in. Whew—the old place still had power. He figured out how to thread the reel. Tim had shown him how, but that was a long time ago. After a few false starts, Charlie got it. The warehouse space was perfect. Its huge blank walls were large enough to be real movie screens and a patch of rain clouds had made it just dark enough inside. “You ready?”

  The giant looked up, not quite ready to give up the pen but intrigued by the projector.

  “Okay, here we go,” said Charlie. “Check this out.”

  With the click of a switch, the projector began to whir. Flickers of light danced forth and then an enormous image of Bruce Lee in black gloves and matching shorts appeared on the far wall. His chubby opponent attacked. Bruce countered with a series of lightning-fast punches and throws that sent his challenger to the ground.

  The startled giant backed up against the wall farthest from the projection. “Charlie!”

  Charlie turned off the machine, surprised to see the colossus cowering. “Hey, hey, hey!” The boy held up his hands to calm the giant. “It’s just a movie!”

  The giant scrunched his nose at the word. “M-m-movie?”

  “Pictures,” Charlie explained. “Pictures that move. They tell a story.”

  The giant stared down at the projector, then back up at the blank wall. He pointed at the empty space with a tentative finger, inviting Charlie to start the movie again.

  Bruce Lee came to life once m
ore, and this time the giant didn’t flinch. Instead he edged across the room to try to touch the image. It appeared on the giant’s back when he stood between the projector and the wall.

  “Come here,” said Charlie, grabbing an end of the giant’s tunic and tugging him back. “You sit and watch. It’s a story.”

  The giant still was baffled, but he sat against the wall. Charlie plopped down, and the two of them watched the movie together.

  Even though Tim was wrong about most things, Charlie couldn’t deny that Enter the Dragon was pretty great. The giant forgot his initial fear and lost himself in the flickering images on the wall. He was so engrossed, in fact, that when Bruce Lee fought an opponent on a strange island, the giant rose to his feet and began mimicking the martial arts master’s moves with surprising grace and dexterity. The giant’s punches and kicks mirrored Lee’s own.

  “Whoa, that’s awesome! I think you just got a new name,” decided Charlie. “I’m calling you Bruce. You even sort of look like him. Well, a bigger version.”

  “Bruce,” responded the giant, still keeping his eye on the action.

  “Right! That’s him. And now, that’s you. You’re Bruce.”

  13

  Jamie coasted to the Accelerton security point. His rear still smarted from the morning injection, but he’d used the pain as motivation to push through a tough workout and make the substantial ride out to his dad’s lab.

  He pulled his bike up to the intercom and pushed the buzzer. The gate didn’t open right away so he hopped off his bike, picked up a decent-size rock from the parking lot, and hurled the stone toward one of the greenhouses. It banged a pane of glass, cracking it. He was just about to try again when the security gate buzzed and slid open far enough for him to walk his bike through.

  Jamie eschewed the bike rack at the edge of the parking lot. He dropped his racer right on the manicured Accelerton lawn and went through the lobby door, almost colliding with Neil Barton. The guy, lost in his phone, didn’t even say hello.

  Jamie noticed how awful the guy looked. Barton’s froggy eyes were swollen and red, and his fat face was even puffier than usual, which was saying something. A large van checked in at security, and Barton hustled to meet it. Dr. Fitzgibbons called from the lab corridor. “Come on, Jamie, let’s go.”

  His father led Jamie to a room that reeked of acrid chemicals. He groaned when he saw racks of dirty test tubes, beakers, and sample dishes stacked on the stainless-steel counters. Fitzgibbons opened a closet full of long light-blue coats and handed Jamie a pair of safety glasses. “No way,” he refused. “These things make me look like a dork.”

  “I’ve got no time for the usual nonsense today. Put on the gear and get to work. Glass goes on the trays. You know the drill: Load them in the washer and press Start. When the cycle is done, put the clean ones on the drying rack, and start all over again.”

  Jamie stared at the mountain of dirty glassware. “All of it?”

  “For starters,” said Fitzgibbons. “Then you can go around to all the open labs and take the trash out back. I’ll see you in a couple hours.”

  Jamie slammed glass into the cleaning trays, and his stomach growled. Morning workouts made him hungry as a bear, so he hurried to the hall to ask his dad for snack machine money. But he was too late. At the end of the corridor, his father was just disappearing inside his top-secret lab, the one Jamie was never allowed inside. The boy watched the door’s slow close before it locked tight with a metallic click.

  He returned to load trays of dirty test tubes into the industrial washer and start the cycle. He listened to it shoot hot chemical water over the glassware and felt his own blood rushing. Alone in the room with nothing but the mundane task in front of him, Jamie felt like chucking test tubes against the walls, just busting stuff up. He took deep breaths the way his linebackers coach had tried to teach. “Controlled fury” was what he’d called it.

  A clatter in the hallway caught his attention. Jamie went to the small square window in the door to see what was going on.

  It was tubby Barton, struggling with a wooden crate. Jamie scoffed. It didn’t look that heavy, but the guy was huffing and puffing like it was full of cannonballs. He caromed down the corridor, then attempted to rest the crate on his knee so he could press his sweaty palm to open the door.

  Jamie did all he could not to bust out laughing. Every time the awkward guy lifted his hand, he lost his balance and almost dropped the crate. After half a dozen tries, Barton managed to both unlock the door and wrangle it open.

  He threw the door as wide as he could, then hefted up the box and stumbled through. In a flash, Jamie saw a window of opportunity open. He had like four seconds before the door closed. One thousand one. One thousand two.

  By one thousand three, Jamie slipped out into the hall as quietly as he could and sprinted for the lab. At one thousand four, he lunged for the heavy door just as it was about to shut. The steel pinched his fingers, and he bit down hard on his lower lip to keep from yelling in pain. Holding the door open just a hair, he knew he needed to move fast. He pried the door open far enough to slip into the lab and dove under the nearest table.

  The door sealed behind him.

  Jamie’s heart pounded as his dad helped Barton lift the crate onto a stainless-steel table in the middle of the lab. From his hiding spot, Jamie took in the massive server rows, incredible monitor displays, and mazes of glass tubing that ran throughout the room.

  “There’s one more box,” Barton said, clutching his lower back.

  “Let me give you a hand this time.” Dr. Fitzgibbons sighed. The two men started for the door, and Jamie slid farther into the shadows under the next lab table, taking care not to get caught in the spider web of cables and wires.

  The door opened once again. Conversation faded as the door clicked shut.

  He scrambled to his feet, alone at last. Jamie had been to his father’s labs in other towns, but none of them looked like this one. There was way more high-tech gear, for one thing, and the weird empty space in the back. He checked out the equipment displays, but they were a mess of math moving at a million miles an hour.

  He turned to Barton’s computer, which was easy to pick out by the pile of empty takeout bags surrounding it. Jamie knew his dad wouldn’t eat that crap, and if he did, he wouldn’t have been such a slob about it.

  Jamie grabbed Barton’s greasy mouse, and the monitor came to life. An animation featured a model that looked quite a bit like Barton—pudgy, balding, and wearing glasses. It stood in the middle of the screen, flanked by digital graph lines. The vertical gradient on the left measured height, and the Barton-model stood a few inches below six feet. A series of tabs labeled Gen1, Gen2, all the way up to Gen50, marked the bottom axis. Jamie clicked on Gen1, and the model grew to about six foot two. His features and muscle structure also enlarged to match the model’s new size. Gen2 brought the man to six foot five. Jamie was about to see what Gen50 yielded when there was a noise in the hall. They were coming back.

  He minimized the animation program, which revealed a security profile. Fitz had to look twice. There was a picture of Lawson. Charlie Lawson!

  The door clicked open. Fitz ducked out of sight beneath the workstation table. His head spun as he tried to connect growth simulations and Charlie Lawson. Had his dad chosen Lawson as a test subject for whatever new growth stuff they were working on? Jamie remembered his father’s sermon earlier in the basement, about guys like Lawson killing for the chance to get bigger. The potential betrayal burned.

  Barton and Fitzgibbons hauled in the second crate, setting it next to the first and pulling the sides away on both. Inside, rats climbed over one another, complaining in a communal chee chee chee!

  Fitzgibbons signed a series of release forms and acceptance acknowledgments on a clipboard. “Get JoAnne to file these,” he said, handing it to Barton. “And then we’ll check the restriction enzymes.”

  As Barton took the clipboard and hustled to the door, Jamie sa
w the way to escape. His dad already had turned his attention to calculations at his workstation. Jamie crouched as Barton left, timing the closing of the door.

  With his head still reeling from the discoveries he’d made inside the lab, Jamie slipped out behind Barton and back into the utility room like nothing had happened. But now Jamie had a pile of questions.

  He dismissed asking his father for answers. If Jamie admitted sneaking into the lab, his punishment would be way worse than washing dirty dishes. He shoved another rack into the washer and started forming a plan to pound the answers out of Lawson.

  14

  Charlie shut off the movie projector, despite the giant’s protest. The newly christened Bruce continued practicing his new kung fu moves in the musty warehouse air.

  “I can’t do Enter the Dragon again, dude. Twice is enough,” Charlie said. Watching Bruce nail move after move with just a little practice was pretty cool, but even that was getting old.

  Charlie’s phone rang. He expected his mom on the other end. But the glowing screen read Adele. At the sound of the musical ring tone, Bruce leaned in. Charlie answered the call.

  “Boy,” said Adele, “I just got an interesting phone call.”

  “Huh?”

  “We’re on a date right now! Didn’t you know?” she teased.

  Oh no, Mom, you didn’t. Charlie closed his eyes in dismay. She’d made good on her threat to double-check his story.

  “I hope I’m having a great time!”

  “I … I…” he stammered as his brain spun in its tracks.

  “So what’s really going on?”

  Charlie was busted. All his fibs were coming back to bite him in the butt, so he tried a version of the truth. “See, a friend of mine is in town, but then my mom’s boyfriend invited me to go to Madison…”

  “So, you needed to tell your mom a lie, and you used me as your alibi,” Adele concluded. “I don’t really mind all that much, but next time you might want to let me in on it so we get our stories straight, you know?”