Modelland (46 page)

“Are we there yet, Creamy?”

“Not yet, Myrracle,” Mrs. De La Crème answered wearily. “Just lie back and relax, okay?”

“It’s hard to relax when I
stink
so bad.”

“I know.”

The De La Crème women
did
smell; all the Pilgrims smelled like a Peppertown sewer on its foulest of days. The body odor had gotten worse because of the intense physical labor they had all endured recently. Creamy had created her own mountain monarchy after the group had elevated her to the position of
secret weapon
to get them to Modelland. And Creamy, never known to let an opportunity wither, had leveraged that status to be
elevated
, quite
literally: she had ordered the Pilgrims to fashion a
double sedan chair
from scraps found on the Divide. Which they did. To carry the De La Crèmes up the mountain. Which they were doing. It was a small price to pay for Creamy’s brave confrontation with the pond monster, after all.

“Remind me
why
are we hauling Queeny and Dope-ical?” Lynne complained while trudging up a steep incline, the post from the thronelike chair digging into her shoulder.

“Break requested, Creamy!” Kamata yelled.

Creamy jutted her mud-caked chin in the air. “Request … approved.”

As they lowered the women to the ground, Creamy gazed up the mountain. The peak still seemed so far away.

But ahead of them, the scenery changed radically. A lush garden of flowers no one in the group could identify greeted them. The aroma of the buds was almost overpowering—strong citrus that stung their nostrils and a sweet aroma of honey that made their eyes water. Myrracle twirled around the floral bushes and deeply inhaled their scent.

“Yum, Creamy. They all smell so good. I wanna pick
boo-tays
of them!” she trilled, kicking her leg up, smacking it into her ear.

“Bouquets, sweetie. You want to pick
bouquets
,” Creamy said tiredly.

Suddenly, a haunting, keening sound snaked around the group.

Lynne froze. “It sounds like a woman moaning in pain!”

“Look there!” Abigail said. She pointed her hairy arm toward a small, well-tended cemetery made up of six old polished-marble tombstones with elaborate engravings.

Creamy marched up to the headstones and stared at the markers:
MUSE MELODIA, MUSE PRANCIA, MUSE CHROMIA, MUSE DRAMATIA, MUSE FABRICIA
, and
MUSE CHITECTIA
.

“Wow … who were they?” Lynne whispered, leaning closer to touch one of the stones.

At her touch, the headstone glowed a golden yellow. The burial ground began to pulse. Kamata pulled his shank spear from his knapsack and crouched into a defensive position. Then came the sound of hundreds of pitter-pattering feet.

“Defensive mode!” Creamy ordered.

Harriet, Lynne, and Hunchy jumped in front of Myrracle and Creamy as if guarding treasure.

The tombstones began to emit angry sparks. A primal scream rang out. But it wasn’t coming from the tombstones. It was Abigail. She was looking up the mountain, toward Modelland.

“I have taken your crap for too long!” Abigail screamed. “But I have had it up to
here
! I should have known you wouldn’t help me change the world. To spread the word about how beautiful a hairy body can be. And now I … have … had … 
enough
!”

Harriet ran over to Abigail and tried to soothe her, but Abigail scuttled toward the rocks and picked up something shiny and metal. It looked like a dagger. “What are you doing, baby?” her mother asked.

From the look in Abigail’s eyes, it was clear she couldn’t hear her mother. Her mind had gone elsewhere. Abigail yanked at her soiled clothing, pulling everything off. She stood before the Pilgrims stark naked. She gripped the shiny dagger.

“Abby, baby,” Harriet pleaded. “Please don’t hurt yourself. We can change the world. Get them to accept our kind.”

Abigail brought the knife to her chest. “Noooo!” Harriet screamed. But instead of impaling her body with the weapon, Abigail began to scrape her body with it. A tuft of her thick underarm hair tumbled to the ground. With lightning speed, Abigail shaved her sideburns, her arms, her most private of parts, and then her legs. She finished by removing all the knee-length black hair from her head. Every trace of her hair, eyebrows included, was gone and lay in clumps at her feet.

“Why?”
Harriet wailed. She could barely stand; Lynne held her upright.

“Mom, I am giving it all, minus the portions deemed inappropriate, to Hair for PitterPatter,” Abigail said calmly.

Now that she was completely without hair, the group could see the Abigail who had been hiding all along.

“Preee-teee …,”
Hunchy slobbered, ogling Abigail.

The organ eater was wrong, though. Abigail was not simply pretty. She was out-of-this-world, breathtakingly beautiful—absolutely, undeniably, soul-stirringly stunning. Kamata smiled at her for the first time since the journey had begun. Creamy’s expression, however, was the polar opposite of those of the rest of the crew. With Jessamine out of the way, Myrracle had become the most stunning girl in the group. But now, with countless flicks of a makeshift razor, that was no longer the case. Creamy shot Abigail a jealous look of death.

As the group continued to stare, the air filled with the sound of feet flitting toward them, and in the distance, the source of the noise appeared. It was a spiderlike creature three times the size of a Peppertown city bus. But instead of eight legs, this creature had thousands. And the legs looked … 
human
. They stuck out of the creature’s body like the spikes of a porcupine. When the monster
reared up, it revealed a soft, fleshy underbelly. There was an immense leech’s sucker in the middle. Tiny but numerous sharp, toenail-shaped teeth rimmed the opening.

“Oh my,” Creamy said, showing a hint of fear for the very first time. “It’s some sort of Leg Leech.”

Abigail screamed.

“We should run!” Harriet screamed.

Hunchy howled.

Strangely, Lynne heckled the monster. “I should have dragged my cheating husband up here! He is a leg man, after all. He would
love
you! And the leggy ones always want to take your husband!”

The Leg Leech glared at the group. Then it extended two of the legs on its body so that they stuck out farther than the multitudes of others, and clicked them together.

“What’s it doing?” Kamata whimpered, standing behind Creamy for protection.

“It’s snapping its leg-fingers!” cried Myrracle, and she started snapping in the same rhythm the creature was. The creature seemed almost delighted with Myrracle. It turned to the others, and they all started snapping too. Finally, the creature looked at Lynne, who wasn’t snapping. It waited.

“Huh?” Lynne looked confused.

“Hurry up!” shouted Myrracle. “Snap your fingers like me, Lynne!”

Lynne began snapping with her right hand to the rhythm of the Leg Leech’s head-bopping beat. The creature seemed pleased, and motioned for Myrracle and Lynne to join in with both hands. Myrracle complied, snapping double time while doing her signature high kicks. But Lynne just could not double-snap to perfection, given that she had lost her left hand’s middle finger weeks
before. Harriet stopped snapping and walked over to Lynne to help her out.

The creature contorted, then reared back and exposed its toenail-sucker mouth. A forked tendril extended from the center. Two sharp, toenail-clipper blades on the end of the fork made scissoring actions, slicing both Harriet and Lynne at their hips.

“Oh my God!”
Abigail screamed.
“Do something, Creamy!”

“I’m your leader, not a magician, dear,” Creamy said dryly.

The Leg Leech burped out a pile of Harriet’s hair and threw the two women’s legs onto its body. They instantly attached, still kicking wildly. Then the creature balanced itself on a group of ten legs. It began to waltz to a place in front of the surviving Pilgrims.

“
I
know how to save us, Creamy!” Myrracle yelled.
“Dancing!”

Creamy looked at her, relieved. “Do your thing, Myrracle, baby. Dance in your spirit
and
in your body.”

Myrracle gazed up at her mother, touched that for the first time Creamy supported her dancing. She proudly ran in front of the Leg Leech and began a rousing back-and-forth dance routine with Bellissima in her arms.

Slowly and joyfully, the Leg Leech retreated, backing away like a thousand ballerinas in unison. If anyone had been standing just a bit closer, they would have noticed that swaying along with Myrracle and Bellissima was one of the ancient tombstones. The one marked
MUSE PRANCIA
, to be exact.

Just then, a ring of fire encircled the cemetery, Myrracle, and Bellissima.

“Oh my Lord!” Creamy began to run in hysterical circles. “My babies! Somebody get my babies!”

The circle of flames burst high into the air and amassed into a huge fireball, freeing Myrracle and Bellissima. The fireball then
flew straight toward Kamata and Abigail. Kamata grabbed Abigail’s hand in panic and started to run.

Creamy shouted, “Run that way, Kamata!” Kamata looked disoriented and ran straight into the flames, just as Creamy had instructed. In seconds, nothing of Kamata and Abigail was left. Not even ash.

“Ah, the beauty balance is restored,” Creamy said under her breath.

Myrracle stood in shock. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.”

Creamy walked over and slapped Myrracle hard across both cheeks. “We did not come all this way for you to lose your damn mind! Look at Bellissima! She is handling this so much better than you! Pull it together and let’s go!”

“Okay, Creamy,” Myrracle whimpered. But as her mother turned her back, Myrracle took her shank and sliced Bellissima’s plastic flesh down her hard back.

As Creamy, Myrracle, Bellissima, and Hunchy, the last four surviving Pilgrims, traipsed through the field, Myrracle began to stare at something in the distance. “Ooh … look at the pretty lights!”

A terrified scowl appeared on Creamy’s face. “Those aren’t lights, idiot! Those are more fireballs!”

Four fireballs raged toward the group—one for each of them, even Bellissima. Myrracle and Creamy ran one way and Hunchy ran the other. The fireballs landed, throwing massive sparks everywhere. And then … silence.

After a few minutes, Hunchy opened his eyes. He wiggled his toes. Moved his fingers. He was still alive.

He called out, waiting for Creamy’s answer. But none came.

Hunchy jumped up from the mud and shook himself off. All that running and dodging had worked up his appetite. He followed the sweet scent not of blood orange, but of the pancreas and thymus glands that lived within one particular platinum-headed Unica, and he resumed his trek to Modelland.

Alone.

Late that night, Tookie and the other Unicas huddled in a circle just outside the D.

“So … you’re sure that’s where the emergency ZipZap is?” Dylan looked uncertain.

There was something about Dylan’s voice that bothered Tookie. “For the tenth time, Dylan, yes. Bravo took me there to see it. I don’t know how many times I have to repeat myself. I saw the ZipZap with my own eyes. And it’s not far from the OrbArena, where ManAttack is happening tomorrow.”

“And you’re competing?” Piper asked.

“Correct, Piper,” Tookie replied.

“Then you leave with pretty boy after AttackMan without Unicas?” Shiraz sighed.

“No. I can’t do that,” Tookie said sharply, feeling a rush of nausea as soon as she spoke. As much as she’d tried to tamp the feelings down, it was undeniable: she was in love. A love so deep, she never thought it could happen to her. But in order to survive, she would have to leave Bravo and Modelland forever.

She sighed and looked at the Unicas. She didn’t want to be in this life-love-or-death situation. And yet she was. “We’re going to take that ZipZap,” Tookie told the Unicas. “But we need to create a distraction tomorrow so we can get to it without getting caught. You guys have seen the OrbArena, right?”

“Yes, in first-day tour,” Shiraz said. “It that crazy egg building with open steel and expose wire.”

“Right,” Tookie said. “Maybe Piper can scout it out while ManAttack is going on. The exposed wires will make it easier for you to follow the trail to the main lighting switchboard. You need to find the on/off switch and create a blackout.”

Piper squinted. “A blackout?”

This response rankled Tookie too.
“Duh,”
she snapped. Piper sounded like a parrot. “I thought you were the
intelligent
one.”

Piper recoiled. She exchanged a look with Shiraz and Dylan. Then she fiddled with the puzzle game in her hands and said, “What if I don’t find the switchboard?”

“You will,” Dylan assured her.

“You is being princess of SansColor!” Shiraz whooped.

Piper narrowed her eyes at her; she seemed annoyed too. “There’s no such thing.”

“This is Modelland, Piper,” Dylan said. “Anything’s possible here.”

Even a Forgetta-Girl being adored by the most wondrous, lovely Rememba-Boy in the world
, Tookie thought.

“Tookie?” Piper said. “Did you hear what I said?”

Tookie turned to Piper and blinked. “Huh?”

Piper’s top lip curled over her teeth.
“Duh,”
she mimicked. “I was saying that Dylan needs to be ready for a fainting spell in case we need a diversion. Isn’t that right?”

“Uh, yeah.” Tookie straightened up. “And that’s when you’ll find the switch, Piper. And Shiraz, you’ll be our natural night-vision so we can find our way out.”

Then Shiraz peered at Tookie. “I no like this. This plan all goosey-loosey.”

“Look, I’m doing my best here.” Tookie gritted her teeth. “You all elected me leader, so I’m
leading
! If you wanted someone else to lead, you shouldn’t have picked me!”