Strike of the Sweepers

Marv scratched a rough hand through his thick beard. “How’d that work out?”

  “It’s a long story,” Spencer said. This didn’t seem like the right time to discuss it, even though the battle appeared to be finished.

  “Looks like you’re not the only one who picked up some powers,” Marv said.

  Dez landed beside Spencer, displacing a lot of dust as he put his feet down. “This is the guy we came looking for, right?” He pointed a hooked finger at Marv.

  “I remember you,” Marv said. “From detention.” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “But you didn’t have wings.”

  “Yeah,” Dez said, unfolding and refolding his prize possessions. “These babies are new. I’m a Sweeper.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked the janitor.

  “It means I’m awesome.” Dez reached for the leaf blower on Spencer’s back again. “We found the dude. Let’s get out of here.”

  Marv chuckled bitterly. “There’s no way out. I’ve been searching since the minute I got here.”

  “We brought a way out,” Spencer said, gesturing to the big device on his back. “But we can’t use it yet. We have to give Bookworm at least another hour to get the Vortex into position.”

  “We won’t last another hour,” Marv said. “Not out here, unprotected like this. The TPs will be back. And they’ll adapt to our attacks. Next time, those latex gloves won’t be much use.”

  “Where can we go?” Daisy asked, looking around at the expanse of nothingness.

  “We should get back to the fortress,” Marv said.

  “You found a fortress out here?” Spencer said.

  “Didn’t find it,” said Marv. “Built it.”

  The burly janitor held out his hand with the palm up to the sky. He closed his eyes in concentration, and the dust above his hand began to swirl. The particles came together to form a new paper airplane, with folds crisp and even.

  “How are you doing that?” Daisy asked again.

  “It’s the dust,” Marv explained. “Down here, you can use your imagination to shape the dust into real stuff.”

  Olin had mentioned something like that in his letter, though Spencer hadn’t known exactly what it meant until he saw Marv doing it.

  “Anything?” Dez asked. Spencer didn’t want to imagine what the bully was thinking about concocting.

  “Has limits,” said Marv. “I can only build stuff that I’ve seen in real life. The better I understand it, the stronger it holds up. That’s why I use these.” He held out the paper airplane. “Kids were always folding these at school. Tried to fly them across the hallway and land them in the trash can. ’Course, nine times out of ten, they’d miss. I spent half my work days picking up paper airplanes off the floor.”

  Marv stepped forward and tossed the plane. It came out of his hand like a bird taking flight. As it cut through the dusty air, it displaced the particles, leaving a clean wake behind it.

  “Let’s move,” said Marv. “If we stay close behind the plane, the TPs won’t be able to reform in front of us.”

  The three kids followed Marv into the clear wake of the folded airplane. Spencer glanced over his shoulder, noticing that the particles remained displaced only for a moment before settling into a thick haze once more.

  “Where did those mummy guys come from?” Daisy asked.

  “From somebody’s imagination,” answered Marv. “They form out of the dust, just like my planes.”

  “Who’s making them?” Daisy asked.

  “They’re called the Instigators,” said Marv. “Don’t really have a clue who they are. When the Vortex dropped us back there, the TPs found us in minutes. Wiped out two of the BEM workers before we could blink. I got away, along with the other BEM folks.”

  Spencer didn’t want to ask it, but he had to know. “Garth Hadley?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Marv said. “That scumbag’s still out here somewhere.”

  “Do you think we’ll run into him?” Spencer asked.

  “Not if I can help it,” said Marv. “He can turn to dust for all I care.”

  Chapter 38

  “They’re quilted, like Charmin.”

  Marv’s fortress wasn’t at all what Spencer was expecting to see through the haze. It wasn’t a castle with jagged battlements and rising turrets. There was no grand gate or formidable drawbridge. Instead, the fortress looked more like . . .

  “Is that Welcher Elementary School?” Daisy asked.

  “Yeah,” Marv muttered. “Well, parts of it, anyway.”

  “You can build anything you want, and you chose to make Welcher?” Dez said. “I hate that place.”

  “We can only build what we know,” Marv said. “Places we’ve actually been. Welcher was fresh on my mind when I got sucked into the Vortex, so I used the school as a basic pattern. There’s bits of other places I’ve worked, too.”

  “So why are we just standing here?” Dez asked. “Why don’t we go inside?”

  “This is the first time I’ve left the fortress in months,” Marv said. “Been gone at least fifteen minutes. Anything could’ve happened. I got to make sure it’s still safe before I take you kids in there. Last thing we want is to open the door and let in a bunch of One-Plys.”

  “What’s a One-Ply?” Spencer asked.

  “It’s the cheap toilet paper,” answered Marv. “Just got one thin sheet with no perforations. Most of the mummies are One-Plys. They’re dumb as dirt, but they put up a good fight.”

  Spencer remembered the mummy leader. It seemed to have been made of different tissue. “Are there other kinds?”

  “Two-Plys,” said Marv. “They’re quilted, like Charmin. Two-Plys can talk, but they’d just as soon rip your skin off as ask about the weather.”

  “What is the weather like around here?” Daisy asked.

  “You’re seeing it.” Marv gestured up to the sky. “Always the same. Never gets dark, never gets light. Dust. So much dust.”

  Marv’s folded airplane suddenly returned. It looped around the janitor’s head and perched on his broad shoulder like an obedient bird.

  “What’s going on over there?” he asked. “Any TPs?”

  The tip of the paper airplane shook back and forth in a motion that could only be interpreted as a negative head shake.

  “Good,” Marv said. “Looks clear, then?”

  This time the airplane nodded its tip up and down. Marv reached his big hand up and plucked the folded paper from his shoulder. “Thanks,” he said. Then, soundlessly, the little paper plane dissolved to dust between his fingers.

  “What happened to it?” Daisy asked.

  “I didn’t need it anymore,” Marv said.

  “But you didn’t have to kill it!” she said. “Wasn’t it helping you?”

  “I didn’t kill it,” Marv said. “It was never alive. I unimagined it.”

  “Why?”

  “Everything that I’ve imagined out of the dust takes effort to keep around,” Marv explained. “If I’m not using it, I might as well unimagine it.”

  “I wish I could unimagine Spencer sometimes,” said Dez.

  “Come on,” Marv said. He moved forward, his large feet trudging through the soft dust.

  They reached the front door of the fortress in no time. It was a fairly accurate re-creation of Welcher Elementary’s entrance, but something was off.

  “Wait a minute,” Marv said. “This isn’t the right paint.”

  “Who cares about the paint on the door?” Dez said. “Just open it.” He reached out and tugged on the handle, but it was locked.

  “Paint sealed over the door,” Marv said.

  “Can’t you just unimagine it?” Spencer asked.

  “You can only do that to things that you’ve imagined,” explained Marv. “This paint job isn’t mine.”

  “Then who did it?” Daisy asked. “The Instigators?”

  “This wasn’t the Instigators,” Marv muttered. “This was somebody we know.”

  “Garth Hadley.?
?? Spencer said the name under his breath like a curse.

  Marv nodded slowly. “Locked me out of my own fortress.”

  “What about the walls?” Spencer asked. “You made those, right? So you can unimagine them?”

  Marv was already examining the school walls. “Looks like he used the same imaginative paint over the whole structure,” said the janitor. “I can’t get past it to unimagine the wall underneath.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Spencer said, drawing a bottle of blue Windex from his janitorial belt. “This will turn the wall to glass so we can break through.”

  He leveled the spray nozzle at the wall, but Marv reached out, his thick hand holding Spencer back. “When the only thing between you and death is a little wall, you make sure nobody breaks in.”

  “What do you mean?” Spencer lowered the spray bottle.

  “I built defenses into the walls to stop the TPs from pounding them down. If you hit that wall, it’ll be the last thing you do.”

  “Try it anyway,” Dez said. “See what happens.”

  Spencer wasn’t about to be goaded into making a foolish mistake. He holstered the Windex as Marv explained the consequences.

  “I designed the wall to backfire,” said the big janitor. “Hit it, and it hits you back. Knocks the dust right out of those TPs.” He scratched his beard. “These walls can’t be broken down.”

  “So how do we get in?” Spencer asked.

  “Think I’d build a fortress without a hidden door?” Marv flashed a cunning grin. “Follow me.”

  The janitor set off through the dust, moving quickly along the outside of the mock Welcher Elementary. Spencer thought it was strange as they passed the window that would lead to Mrs. Natcher’s classroom. Garth had painted over the glass, so he couldn’t see inside, but he was curious to see what else Marv had imagined up.

  They quickly arrived at a section of the school that Spencer had never seen before. It definitely wasn’t Welcher, and Spencer assumed that Marv had patterned this piece after another school where he used to work.

  “Should be right here,” Marv muttered. He waved his hand, and the movement swept aside a layer of dust to expose something that had been buried.

  It was a bowling lane.

  The long lane stood alone in its dusty surroundings, angled at a gentle slope toward the school. Ten pins were set up against the school’s brick wall, forming their usual triangular pattern.

  “Good,” Marv said. “It’s still here.” He held out his hand, and the dust began to swirl. In a flash, it had formed into a heavy red bowling ball, Marv’s thick fingers wedged into the holes.

  “Ever bowled a turkey?” Marv asked, lifting the ball to eye level.

  “No,” Daisy said. “But we always eat one for Thanksgiving.”

  “You eat bowling balls for Thanksgiving?” Dez asked.

  “I don’t think Marv’s talking about the bird,” Spencer said.

  “We call it a turkey when you bowl three strikes in a row,” the janitor explained.

  “I always thought it was three strikes and you’re out,” said Daisy.

  “That’s baseball,” Spencer said. “You want to get strikes in bowling. It means you knock all the pins over.”

  “I don’t see how bowling three strikes is going to get us inside your dumb fortress,” Dez said to Marv.

  “Besides cleaning up messes,” Marv said, “I’m not too good at many things. Had to find something that I could do better than Garth.” He hefted the eighteen-pound ball. “Bowling.”

  “So you have to bowl three strikes, and the secret door will open?” Spencer said.

  Marv nodded his shaggy head. “Yep.” He stepped forward, dropped his back foot, swung his arm in a smooth arc, and released the heavy red ball. It rolled gracefully down the lane, curving just the right amount to avoid the gutters and line up with the center pin.

  The ball struck the first pin, which tipped, colliding with another and starting a chain reaction. Each pin clattered to the ground, turning to dust as the bowling ball tore through them. It was a perfect strike, and all ten pins were down in a heartbeat.

  Marv nodded in satisfaction and reached into thin air, where he was already conjuring another bowling ball from the creative dust. At the end of the lane, ten new pins were automatically forming.

  “Strikes are easy,” Dez said. “Give me that ball.” He reached for Marv’s red ball, but the janitor swatted his hand back.

  “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!”