[Janitors 04] Strike of the Sweepers (25 page)

“This isn’t a game, kid,” Marv said. “Two more strikes and we’re inside. But it only takes one pin left standing to bring down the whole fortress.”

“What?” Daisy said. “If you mess up, then the whole place goes
poof
?”

Marv nodded. “Self-destructs. If I can’t get back inside, then Garth shouldn’t be able to use my walls for his own purposes.”

“You better not mess up,” Dez muttered.

“I won’t,” Marv said. He lifted the bowling ball to eye level again, sighting down the lane in preparation for his second strike.

But an enemy strike came first.

Chapter 39

“I got a strike once.”

The dust swirled around them, and a group of One-Plys instantly formed. Spencer was so taken by surprise that he found himself flat on his back before he could draw a weapon.

Marv leapt away from the bowling lane, swinging his eighteen-pounder like a club. It knocked off the head of the nearest TP and ripped through the chest of the next, dissolving them both.

One of the mummies cast its toilet-paper streamers to entangle the big janitor, but Daisy’s dustpan shield knocked the attack off course. Dez slammed into the back of a One-Ply, talon fingers tearing the figure apart.

Spencer saw Marv lumber back to the lane, arm cocked and ready to bowl. The heavy ball had barely left his fingers when a One-Ply pounced on him. Marv tumbled aside, and Spencer watched with anxiety as the ball cruised down the smooth lane.

A TP moved in on Spencer, blocking his view. He found the handle of his plunger and yanked it from the U-clip on his belt. The distinct sound of clattering pins reverberated through the Dustbin, and Spencer hoped that Marv’s bowl had knocked them all down.

The One-Ply came at Spencer, but the boy’s plunger knocked it to dust. In the haze, Spencer saw that Marv had indeed managed to bowl a second strike.

One more to go.

TPs were appearing by the dozen. Spencer could sense their excitement at finding people outside the fortress, and they were being created at an alarming rate.

Dez was in the air, avoiding dangerous strands of toilet paper. Spencer and Daisy came back-to-back beside the bowling lane. Both held defensive dustpan shields as they slashed at the TPs with plunger and razorblade.

Marv grappled with a Two-Ply, rolling in the soft dust as each tried to gain the upper hand. The janitor had quickly created a wave of folded paper airplanes, but their effect against the mummies seemed less than what it had been previously. The mummies were adapting to the attack, just as Marv had warned.

“Bowl!” Marv shouted at Spencer and Daisy. The Two-Ply had his arms tied back, but the man was still putting up a fight. “One of you has to bowl a strike and open the door!”

Spencer and Daisy looked at each other, wordlessly debating who should take the responsibility.

“You any good at bowling?” Spencer finally asked.

“Only with the bumpers,” said Daisy. “You?”

“I got a strike once,” Spencer said. “At my ninth birthday party.”

Marv finally ripped free of the Two-Ply. His arms were bleeding where the TP had bound him. He summoned a few more folded planes and moved out to intercept a pair of One-Plys.

“We can’t do it, Marv,” Spencer shouted. “It has to be you!”

“Can’t!” answered the janitor. “Takes too much concentration just to keep these paper planes flying. Get up there and bowl a strike, kid!”

Daisy guarded him as Spencer stepped up to the lane. He had a feeling that this wasn’t going to end well. He didn’t even have a bowling ball!

Spencer suddenly thought of Olin’s note. He’d read it so many times, he had no problem remembering what it said.

Inside the Dustbin, you can imagine and create familiar objects from ordinary dust.

Spencer took a deep breath. He guessed it was time to try out his imagination. Spencer didn’t know how he was going to create a bowling ball from nothing but dust. Olin’s note said it would be easier the longer he stayed in the Dustbin. But Spencer had only been here for thirty minutes, tops. He just wanted Marv to do it. Months in the Dustbin had given him plenty of practice and success.

Daisy cut back a TP hand as Spencer closed his eyes and tried to imagine a bowling ball. Round, smooth, heavy. The one in his imagination was solid blue, the three finger holes placed ideally for his grasp.

“You’re doing it!” Daisy shouted, causing Spencer to open his eyes. The dust at his feet was swirling together, but his shattered concentration caused it to blast apart into useless particles once more.

Spencer slammed his eyes shut again. Round, smooth, heavy. He thought of the last time he’d been bowling, trying to draw details from his actual experiences.

“You did it!” Daisy interrupted him again. But this time it was all right. Lying in the dust at his feet was a blue, ten-pound bowling ball. He couldn’t help but smile at his success. It was his. He had imagined it in perfect detail, and he knew he could unimagine it to dust in the blink of an eye.

Spencer lowered his hand to pick up the bowling ball. Just before his fingers entered the holes, he froze.

“Spencer!” Daisy shouted. “What are you waiting for?”

He said nothing, unwilling to admit it. Spencer had imagined the ball too perfectly, and now he remembered why he hadn’t been bowling in over three years.

The finger holes. They were full of germs. Who knew how many kids had stuck their fingers into those same holes before him? Armpit-scratching kids, nose-picking kids . . . and how often did the bowling balls get cleaned out? Probably never.

“We’re not going to last much longer out here!” Marv yelled, his deep voice rumbling Spencer back to reality. “Pick up the ball, kid!”

If Spencer had imagined the bowling ball, then the germs weren’t real. Right?

Spencer took a deep breath and plunged his fingers into the holes. He lifted the ball, noticing the round depression left behind in the soft dust. Daisy was still working hard in his defense, so Spencer acted quickly now. He stepped up to the end of the lane and lifted the ball to eye level, just as he’d seen Marv do.

Staring down the long lane at the ten pins made Spencer doubt. In his entire life, he had only ever bowled one strike. And that had been pure luck. He’d thrown the ball between his legs!

Spencer exhaled slowly, trying to steady his nerves. He was actually feeling confident that he just might succeed when Dez suddenly bumped into him, wrenching the ball from his grasp.

“No, Dez!” Spencer shouted, but it was too late. Dez had thrown the bowling ball.

“You were taking too long,” Dez said.

Spencer could have unimagined the ball in the blink of an eye, but it actually looked like it was on course for a strike. It slammed into the foremost pin and sent it clattering into the ones behind.

“I told you,” Dez said, “strikes are easy.” He turned his back on the lane as the final pin wobbled. But instead of falling, as Dez was so sure it would, the last bowling pin steadied out and remained standing at the end of the lane.

Marv’s fortress vanished in a puff of colorless dust. Months of mental construction were shattered in a single moment as walls, floor, and ceiling disintegrated without a sound.

Chapter 40

“Open up!”

Dez turned around slowly, his face showing more surprise than Spencer could ever remember seeing.

“What happened?” Marv yelled, tearing apart a toilet-paper mummy and scrambling through the dust where his fortress had once been. Nothing was left but a crumbling shell of Garth Hadley’s imagined paint, too flimsy and weak to provide them any protection from the enemy.

“I . . . I . . .” For once, Dez was speechless.

“You missed!” Spencer yelled. He didn’t admit the fact that he probably wouldn’t have done better. He didn’t admit that he was no good at bowling. Dez had acted out of line and his arrogance had cost them big.

Daisy tumbled under the attack of a One-Ply. The mummy’s streamers tied around her ankles and dragged her through the dust. Spencer didn’t have time to draw a Glopified weapon from his belt. He squinted his eyes and imagined a wall. It was his bedroom wall from Aunt Avril’s house. Simple, but effective.

The dust instantly formed into a Sheetrock barrier, severing the toilet-paper ribbons and temporarily protecting Daisy from harm. An angry Two-Ply threw itself against Spencer’s wall, striking angrily until it crumbled away.

Spencer pulled Daisy back to where Marv and Dez were making a stand. The janitor’s arms were welted and swollen, but he didn’t slow down. Folded paper airplanes flew a tight circle around them, casting aside the particles to make a clean wake in which the TPs could not materialize.

“Way to go!” Spencer said to the Sweeper boy.

“Like you could do better!” yelled Dez. “That last one should’ve tipped over!”

“Now we’ve got nowhere to hide!” said Spencer.

Daisy reached out and touched the leaf blower strapped to Spencer’s back. “We’ll have to use it now. We’ll never survive!”

She was right. Already the TPs were finding ways to swat down the folded airplanes.

“It’s too soon!” Spencer said. “Bookworm won’t be ready. We’ll come out inside his lunchbox head!”

“Who cares,” said Dez. “Just do it!”

“Who is Bookworm?” Marv finally asked. “And what are we waiting for him to do?”

“He’s my pet,” Daisy said. “He’s made of garbage.”

Marv shook his head, as if frustrated that there wasn’t time to ask for clarification. “How long does he need?”

Spencer checked his watch. “Another hour, if we want to be safe.”

“There’s one more place we could go,” Marv said. Spencer knew exactly what the janitor meant, and he didn’t like it at all.

“Garth Hadley’s fortress isn’t far from here,” said Marv.

Spencer shook his head. “He’ll never let us in. He was the one who painted you out of your own school!”

“Oh, he’ll let us in,” Marv said. “All we have to do is tell him we have a way out of here.”

“We’re not taking him with us,” Spencer said firmly.

“I never said we would,” Marv replied. “We just need him to let us in.”

Spencer didn’t like it, but they were short on options. Using the leaf blower now and coming out of the Vortex before it was in position could ruin any chance to rescue Alan, Walter, Penny, and Bernard. Spencer knew they had to stick to the original plan, even if that meant seeing Garth Hadley again.

“This way!” Marv gestured ahead, and the paper airplanes zoomed off in that direction, clearing a pathway through the dust. Without the flying defenses, the TPs closed in fast. But the Rebels were already running as quickly as their feet could churn through the soft ground.

Garth’s fortress came into view much sooner than Spencer expected. It looked very different from Marv’s, though every bit as ordinary. Garth’s building was made of experiences and details drawn from his life as a man of the Bureau.

The fortress seemed to be patterned after an office building, like the kind Spencer had seen in Washington, D.C., as he spied on Mr. Clean through bronze visions.

It was built on a small foundation but towered at least ten stories high. Most of the exterior looked to be made of glass. Spencer didn’t think a fortress with a hundred windows would be very secure, but then he remembered that here, the glass was formed of pure imagination. He had a feeling it wouldn’t shatter easily.

Marv didn’t even slow down as he came to the front door of the building. Any break in their pace would give the TPs an opportunity to catch up with them.

“Hadley!” bellowed the big janitor. “Open up!” He waved his hand, and the paper airplanes that had been guiding them soared upward, knocking their points against the windows.

“Well, well.” Garth Hadley’s charismatic voice drifted down to them. “If it isn’t my long lost friends . . .”

Spencer felt his chest tighten with a surge of old memories. He scanned the tall building but couldn’t see the BEM rep anywhere.

“This is going to play out better than I could ever have planned,” Garth Hadley continued from his unseen place. “When you left your fortress, Marv, I knew you’d come crawling back.”

“You locked me out, Hadley!” Marv thundered.

“Yes, well, what goes around, comes around,” said Garth. “Isn’t that what they say?”

The Rebels had reached the front door of the building, a sea of TPs closing fast. “Open up!” Marv yelled again. “We have a way out. Let us in and we’ll take you with us!”

It was silent for a whole two seconds that seemed like eternity as the TPs drew closer.

“You’re lying!” shouted Garth.

Spencer took a deep breath and pulled the leaf blower from his shoulder. “He’s telling the truth! All I have to do is fire this up and it will blast a way out of the Vortex!”

Whether or not it was Spencer’s words that convinced Garth Hadley, the front doors to the office building suddenly opened. Dez was the first one inside, his wings brushing the metal door frame. Marv ushered Spencer and Daisy in before stepping through and pulling the doors shut behind him.

No sooner had the lock clicked than the first of the TPs slammed into the door. There was a loud crack as the building seemed to kick back, pulverizing the first wave of mummies. One of the Two-Plys shouted a command, and the others came to a begrudging halt, their wrapped faces peering hungrily through the glass doors.

Spencer clutched the leaf blower in his right hand as he turned to examine his surroundings. The Rebels were standing in a lobby with a dark tiled floor and high hanging lights. The air inside the fortress was different. It was clean and dustless, much more like air should be.

“Spencer Zumbro,” Garth Hadley’s voice echoed across the spacious lobby.

Spencer whirled around to find Garth descending a staircase. He was wearing a blue button-down shirt, but it was tattered and bloodstained. His usual manicured appearance was slightly disheveled, though the dapper look on his square face was intact.

The BEM rep reached the bottom of the stairs and strode toward the Rebels. “If someone had told me that Spencer Zumbro and his friends would come knocking on my fortress door, I’d never have believed it,” Garth continued. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad about this recent development. You deserve to wither away in the desolate prison of the Vortex.”