3 Below

  As if Bosco sensed trouble already returning, he walked directly toward Leo, sniffing the air like a hound dog. Leo barely had enough time to crawl away before Bosco’s black boots came into view. He inched as deeply into the dark shadows as he could, hoping he wouldn’t get caught trying to watch them.

  “I have something,” Miss Sheezley said. “Come quick!”

  Bosco was gone in a flash, and Leo found himself with his back against a vast, cold boulder. A low canopy of wide leaves filled the space around him. Sheezley and Bosco were standing before some sort of puzzle, but Leo didn’t dare try to intervene. He was small, they were big, and he was outnumbered.

  “You see there,” Leo heard Miss Sheezley say. “It’s a strand of DNA.”

  “I believe you’re right,” Bosco said. “But what does it mean?”

  Their voices went quiet, like they were whispering to each other, and Leo tried with all his might to hear what they were saying. It is in times such as these that a tap on the arm can be highly upsetting, and so it was when Leo felt something tap-tap-tapping on his elbow. He barely contained his own voice, nearly screaming, as he jumped back and ruffled the leaves all around him.

  “What was that?” Miss Sheezley asked, the whites of her eyes shaped like two chicken eggs. But then Remi howled with laughter from somewhere on the other side of the room. He’d found some very small dinosaur droppings and thought it was hilarious.

  “Don’t be so jumpy,” Bosco said, stroking his walrus mustache with a shaking hand. He was becoming annoyed with Miss Sheezley. “You’re making me nervous. And I hate feeling nervous. It’s a useless emotion.”

  While all this was going on, something quite unexpected was afoot under the cover of darkness, where Leo had just gotten the scare of his life. As it turned out, he was not alone under the broad green leaves of the tiny dino kingdom. Someone had tapped him on the shoulder, and whoever that someone was, they had vanished into a hole in the rock.

  And that someone was whispering.

  “Come inside, where we can talk without being heard.”

  Leo didn’t know what to make of the mysterious whisper, but it was not a voice that sounded like it was attached to a big person, and this gave him some comfort. It was an unexpected situation, but it was perfectly normal for a Merganzer D. Whippet adventure, so he followed the voice into the darkness of the hole, listening as the sound from outside fell away into a distant murmur.

  Inside wasn’t completely dark. In fact, there was a candle flickering in the middle of the space. It put off enough light for Leo to see a small hammock hanging in one corner, a stack of three books, a cup and a plate and a fork, and the most incredible thing of all.

  There, in a dark cave on a hidden floor filled with tiny dinosaurs, sat a girl.

  How did you get inside?” she asked. Leo didn’t think the girl was angry; he thought she was confused, like she hadn’t seen anyone in a long time.

  “It’s complicated,” Leo said, because it was.

  Leo observed her carefully and found that she was in many ways quite normal. She wore a pair of maintenance overalls like his own, and this intrigued him. She had bouncy hair with lots of curls and a face that looked bright and curious even in the shadows.

  “I’d very much like to hear about why you’re hiding in a cave,” Leo said. “But right now, to be perfectly honest, I’m in the middle of something kind of important.”

  “So I gathered,” the girl said, pulling her wildly overgrown hair into a loose ponytail and tying it off with a rubber band. “I think I can help you.”

  The girl dug inside of a pocket and pulled out a small T. rex, holding it in her hand like it was a precious stone. It roared a tiny roar.

  “He only bites if he’s trying to protect me,” she said. “And I almost never need protecting.”

  “Good to know,” Leo said. He could hear Miss Sheezley and E. J. Bosco arguing outside and felt his chances of staying in the competition slipping away with every second.

  “I need to find out what they’re looking at,” Leo said. “It’s a puzzle, or at least I think it is. It would be useful if I could figure out its meaning before they do.”

  “This is Phil,” the girl said, looking at the T. rex. “And I’m Lucy.”

  “Phil?” Leo said, because it was a ridiculous name for a dinosaur, and they both knew it.

  Lucy shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Fair enough,” Leo said, smiling, because the more he sat with it, the more he liked the idea of a T. rex named Phil.

  “He’s fast. Want to see?” Lucy asked.

  “I do.”

  Lucy crept quietly through the hole that led to the cave and Leo followed her. He wanted to hear all about her story, but that would have to wait until there was less pressing business to take care of. Her ponytail flopped back and forth as she crawled away and then sat on her knees, gazing carefully out through the leaves. She looked back at Leo, and he realized she was even prettier than he’d been able to tell in the darkness of the cave.

  “Don’t worry about Phil,” she said. “He can handle himself just fine.”

  “All right, I won’t,” Leo said, because after all, even if Phil was small like a gerbil, he was still a T. rex.

  Lucy set Phil down and pointed him toward E. J. Bosco and Miss Sheezley. When Phil looked back at Lucy, she faked the most frightened face she could come up with. The little dinosaur looked at Bosco’s pudgy ankle, narrowed his brow, and started marching away.

  “I tell you it’s DNA,” Miss Sheezley said. “What else could it be? And what does it mean?”

  “It must have something to do with all these dinosaurs. Whippet must have had access to dino DNA and figured out a way to make them small and harmless. One of them must be the key to unlocking the next floor.”

  Bosco heard a sound behind him that made him think of a bee buzzing in his ear. When he turned, Phil was standing in front of him, roaring as loudly as he could.

  “Speaking of dinosaurs,” he said. “We have a visitor.”

  “How perfect is that?” Miss Sheezley asked. “Here, take my scarf. You can catch him.”

  Bosco took the long scarf and wrapped it around his hand several times.

  “There, now it can’t bite me.”

  He advanced on Phil, but Phil was lightning fast. He darted to the left, jumped onto Bosco’s boot, and scampered under his pant leg before Bosco knew what hit him.

  Then Bosco screamed, because even tiny T. rex teeth sting when they chomp down on an ankle.

  “It’s trying to have me for breakfast!”

  Bosco was slapping at his calf, yelling at Miss Sheezley to do something. She began kicking Bosco as hard as she could.

  “Oh no,” Leo said from his hiding place. “Will Phil be okay?”

  Lucy looked quizzically at Leo. “He’s a T. rex. You could hit him with a hammer and he’d just bounce right back up. Only he’d be angrier.”

  “Poor Bosco,” Leo said as Miss Sheezley got in a particularly good kick, buckling Bosco to his knees.

  “Yeah,” Lucy agreed, shaking her head back and forth. “That is one sad dude.”

  Leo hardly knew Lucy, but he already liked her. She had a pet dinosaur. She was cute, and she dressed just like Leo. Leo concluded that Lucy was, quite possibly, the coolest girl ever.

  Lucy’s little dinosaur darted out of Bosco’s pant leg and stared up at Miss Sheezley like she was a turkey sandwich. When Phil growled and took one step forward, she ran for her life, screaming about the insanity of it all.

  “You don’t scare me!” Bosco screamed at the top of his lungs. “Get ready to meet the bottom of Mr. Boot!”

  Bosco lifted his leg and a shadow fell over Phil that must have felt to him like a solar eclipse. But Phil only narrowed his eyes even more than before, hopped back and forth on his hind legs, and waved Bosco in with his front claws.

  “I feel sorry for him,” Lucy said.

  “Phil?”
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  “Heck no. That Bosco guy just sealed his doom.”

  E. J. Bosco’s foot came down like an anvil, slamming into the pathway with startling force. Leo’s breath caught in his throat, and for a moment he thought Lucy had been wrong about Phil. Had the little guy been smashed into a prehistoric pancake?

  “T. rexes are super fast,” Lucy assured him. “A lot of people don’t know that, but it’s true.”

  Phil reappeared just as she said this. He’d managed to climb up Bosco’s back and perch on his shoulder like a parrot. And what was worse, Phil was staring at Bosco’s floppy earlobe.

  “Which way did he go?” Bosco asked out loud, although Miss Sheezley had long since arrived at the far end of the floor, searching for a way out. Phil appeared to be slowly digging the claws of his hind legs into Bosco’s shoulder, and as Bosco turned in that direction, Phil bit down on his earlobe.

  “That’s gotta hurt,” Lucy said as Bosco screamed. Phil started moving his head back and forth like a dog shaking a toy, and that’s when Bosco started running. He had no idea where he was going, only that there was a searing pain in his ear the likes of which he had never felt before.

  “He shouldn’t go that way,” Lucy said. “There’s a hole over there.”

  “What do you mean, a hole?” Leo asked.

  Just then he heard an echo-filled howling that sounded like someone was sliding down a tube, farther away with every passing second.

  “Yup, he fell in,” Lucy said. “Bummer. I was starting to really enjoy that.”

  “Well, don’t be too bummed out,” Leo said as he crawled forward and stood up on the path. “Bosco was kind of a meathead. I’m pretty sure one hotel is all Merganzer D. Whippet wants him running.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lucy said.

  Before Leo could explain, Phil came running back all excited and bug-eyed. He was in a real lather.

  “Calm down, Phil,” Lucy said in a soothing voice. “You did a marvelous job protecting me. You’re my hero.”

  She tossed him something that looked like a marble covered in mud. Phil gobbled it up in about two seconds flat.

  “Dino treat,” Lucy said. “It’s kind of like dog food, I think. Wanna try one?”

  Leo wished Remi was closer by. His stepbrother had been known to try fish food, cat food, monkey food, and bird food, just for the fun of it.

  “No, thanks,” Leo answered, wishing he were as daring as Remi when Lucy popped one in her mouth, chewed it like a Milk Dud, and put Phil back in one of her overall pockets.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “Now we try to solve a puzzle. Come on — you can help.”

  They walked the few steps required to arrive in front of the rock wall Miss Sheezley had been trying to hide, and the two of them took a good look. There was an image carved into the stone that did look a little bit like a strand of DNA — two lines twisted together so they resembled a barbershop pole. Above the marking were two buttons — one red, one blue.

  “I found that first,” a voice said from a ways off. Leo turned and saw Miss Sheezley standing on top of a boulder about twenty feet away, peering down through thick fauna. She wasn’t about to come anywhere near Phil.

  “Hey, Remi! Hey, Alfred!” Leo yelled as loud as he could. “Can you guys hear me?”

  “Yeah!” Remi yelled back from about fifty feet in the opposite direction of Miss Sheezley. “But not very well. Yell louder.”

  “There’s a puzzle here!” Lucy screamed — and, wow, she could really belt it out. Leo was pretty sure even Merganzer could hear her yelling from outside.

  “You sound like a girl!” Remi said as he laughed. “Hilarious!”

  Lucy looked at Leo curiously.

  “Your friend sounds goofy,” she said.

  “He’s my brother — well, stepbrother, but really my brother. He’s a hoot. You’ll like him.”

  “And Alfred has wandered off somewhere, looking for clues,” Remi called out. “He’s in here somewhere.”

  Lucy smiled and her button nose flattened out against her face. She turned her attention to the puzzle.

  “I know how to solve this. It’s not what you think.”

  Leo looked again at the symbol and the two colored strands. It did look like DNA, and he, like Bosco and Sheezley, assumed he’d find a dino enclosure with a creature that matched the DNA, along with some buttons to push. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  “Which dinosaur does this DNA match?” Leo said. “I bet that’s where we should start. There must be some markings on the enclosures somewhere.”

  Lucy wasn’t buying it. She had very different ideas about the puzzle.

  “Would you mind terribly if I solved it for you? I’ve been wanting to do it for a while, but it takes two people and there’s only one of me.”

  Leo felt suddenly sad for Lucy and wondered how long she’d been living on the floor and how she’d come to be there. And it was a complicated puzzle. He didn’t think Lucy stood a chance of solving it, but he nodded anyway, just to encourage her.

  Lucy stepped up to the puzzle and then turned in Remi’s direction.

  “Hey, kid!” Lucy screamed.

  “His name is Remi,” Leo offered.

  “Who you calling kid?” Remi shot back. “And what’s with the weird impersonations?”

  “Are you all right over there?” Alfred Whitney yelled. He had returned to Remi’s side only a moment before, hobbling in from the deep of the jungle.

  “I’m fine! Just follow the instructions!” Leo yelled back.

  “Whatever you say, Leo-patra,” Remi cackled. He was getting a real kick out of Leo’s voice talents, even if he had no idea why Leo was practicing them.

  Lucy took charge, barking out instructions in rapid succession.

  “If you push the vines away from the left side of the ladder, you’ll see two buttons. Push only the red one.”

  There was a pause, then Alfred yelled back, “Done!”

  Lucy turned to the puzzle and pushed the red button. A whirling sound emanated from behind the stone wall.

  “Now the blue button! Push that one!” Lucy screamed.

  “I tell you, that’s my puzzle!” Miss Sheezley yelled. She had come down off the rock and was marching toward them with a new sense of purpose.

  “Should we sic Phil on her?” Leo asked.

  Lucy pushed the blue button. “Come on, run!”

  “Wait, where are you going?” Leo asked, but he followed anyway, running in line behind her toward Remi and Alfred. He looked over his shoulder and saw Sheezley burst through the leaves onto the path, taking chase.

  “Now grab the ladder by both sides!” Lucy cried. “And twist it as hard as you can. Don’t stop twisting until it stops!”

  Leo understood now — the puzzle image wasn’t a DNA strand at all. It was the ladder that led down from the roof! Only it needed to be twisted in order to solve the puzzle, and the buttons needed to be pushed in tandem.

  “Lucy, you’re brilliant!” Leo said.

  “That’s nice of you to say,” she said. “But hurry! I don’t know how long it will stay open!”

  Just then Leo felt a hand on the back of his maintenance overalls, jerking him to a stop. He wobbled back and forth, then felt Miss Sheezley push him off the trail into a thick pocket of prehistoric ferns. He was up in a flash, but one of his most prized maintenance tools had fallen out of his pockets — half a roll of duct tape — and it was rolling down the path in the wrong direction.

  “It’s opening up!” Leo heard Remi yell. “You gotta see this, bro! It’s awesome!”

  But Leo simply could not imagine his maintenance overalls without half a roll of duct tape resting in the wide leg pocket. It was like peanut butter without jelly: unacceptable.

  And so he ran after it as it continued to roll away and took a sharp turn off the path.

  At the ladder, Alfred was staring up into the ceiling.

  “Mesmerizing, don
’t you think?” he asked Remi. “It looks like the ceiling is being dug out, but there’s no dirt or debris.”

  And it did look that way. The ceiling was swirling away into a long hole over the top of the ladder. It looked like a milkshake in a blender, only upside down, and the hole kept getting longer.

  “How come you’re not climbing?!” Lucy yelled as she arrived at the twisted ladder.

  “Who are you?” Remi asked, guarding the ladder like a chubby centurion.

  “Can we talk about that later?” Lucy said. “There’s a lady running after us and she kicks pretty hard.”

  When Lucy turned around, Miss Sheezley was standing there, out of breath and in a very bad mood. Her usually perfect poof of hair had gone crazy-fro on her head, and her lovely dress was crumpled and ripped. But that wasn’t the really awful part. Miss Sheezley was doing something she never did. She was sweating.

  “Disgusting,” she said, swiping a bead of sweat off her brow. “Out of my way! All of you! I’m going up that ladder this instant!”

  Lucy looked like she might take Phil out of her pocket and put him to work on Miss Sheezley, but she’d never seen an adult woman so angry. It was hard telling how a fight might go down between Phil and a sweaty wild woman who’d gone a little bit off her rocker.

  “Be our guest,” Alfred said, stepping to the side of the ladder and poking Remi in the shoulder with his cane. “Let the lady pass, Remi. We’ll follow after. And really, it’s only fair. She did find the puzzle first.”

  Remi’s jaw dropped and his brow furrowed. “Leo’s not going to like this. Not one bit.”

  Alfred lowered his voice and offered a warning to Remi: “We may find it useful not to be the first one up there.”

  Remi wasn’t so sure. It never made sense in his playbook to give away a perfectly good lead in a race. Leads were hard to get, like rare comic books. When you got one, you kept it.

  “Speaking of Leo, where is he?” Lucy asked, glancing back in the direction from which she’d come. Miss Sheezley was already halfway up the twisty ladder before Lucy got her answer.

  “Don’t leave without me!” Leo yelled as he came into view. “I’m coming!”