“And after all that,” Marv said, “you expected me to welcome you back into our fortress?”
Garth faced Spencer. “See what kind of man your Rebel janitor is? Uncaring and unforgiving. By the time I fought my way back to our shelter, Marv had redesigned it. My walls were broken down and patched over with shoddy fragments of old school buildings. I was begging for mercy at his doorstep with an army of TPs behind me. Marv turned his back and left me to die out there. But I am resilient. From the shapeless particles around me, I formed this.” He gestured grandly at his tall office building, as though it were some finely wrought piece of architecture.
“What about the Instigators?” Spencer asked. “Have you seen them?”
Marv shook his head. “They never come out of their fortress. It’s just wave after wave of TPs, determined to kill. Guess they’re not keen on having neighbors.”
Spencer couldn’t spend any more time thinking about the Instigators. Olin had said to find Marv and get out as soon as possible. So that was exactly what he intended to do.
Spencer glanced at his watch. Less than an hour remained until Bookworm had the Vortex in position. That didn’t leave them much time to ditch Garth Hadley. Especially now that they were in his building.
“How much time left?” Marv asked when he saw Spencer checking. “I’m ready to get home. See the old boss.”
“It might not be that simple,” Spencer said. “Walter’s been captured by Mr. Clean.”
“By who?” Marv asked.
“Not the bald guy with the earring that you see on cleaning supplies,” Daisy said. “This guy is way scarier. He’s just using Mr. Clean as a fake name. Confusing. I know.”
“We have a plan to rescue Walter and the others.” Spencer glanced distrustingly at Garth Hadley, then back at Marv. “A lot has happened since you’ve been gone. We should go somewhere we can talk about it.”
“You’ll talk about it here,” Garth said. “Or I open the doors and let the TPs join our conversation.”
Daisy looked the way Spencer felt—nervous about revealing their plan and bringing Garth Hadley up to speed. Marv just shrugged, as if they didn’t have another alternative. Dez didn’t appear to be paying attention to the conversation at all anymore.
“Start with the School Board,” Garth Hadley said. “Did Leslie Sharmelle manage to take it from the Rebels?”
Spencer resisted the urge to blurt out that Leslie Sharmelle was dead, shattered into tiny fragments at the Auran landfill. That part of the story would come later. For now, he needed to pick up where Marv had left off—the moment before Spencer had pounded the nail into the School Board and turned himself into an Auran.
There was indeed a lot to say.
Chapter 42
“Just flip the switch!”
By the time the story was finished, Marv, Spencer, and Daisy were seated on the lobby floor. Dez was doing aerial tricks around the spacious room, and Garth stood beside the weapons pile. Spencer didn’t like the way the BEM rep eyed the leaf blower, now that Hadley was convinced of its potential to get them out of the Dustbin.
“How much time left?” Marv asked.
Spencer checked his watch for the hundredth time. “Almost there,” he said. “Bookworm should have the Vortex in position within the next fifteen minutes.”
Marv looked over his shoulder. “What about you, Hadley? You coming with us?”
Spencer couldn’t believe the janitor was asking that question. All the while he’d been talking, Spencer had been trying to think of a way to ditch the BEM rep.
“Your plan will never succeed,” Garth Hadley said. “Your enemy has a reputation for cruelty. I know Reginald McClean. You can be sure that your Rebel friends are already dead.”
“Clean promised not to hurt them if I stayed away,” Spencer said.
Garth chuckled. “And he knew you wouldn’t stay away. He’s playing you, Spencer.”
The BEM rep closed his eyes and seemed to think about something else for a moment. It was unnerving, and Spencer tried to shake it by saying, “It doesn’t matter,” even though he could think of nothing that mattered more. “We’re coming out of the Vortex inside the Port-a-Potty, and we’re going down to the laboratory. If it’s too late for my dad and the others, then we’ll still have a shot at stealing Belzora and the nail.”
Of course, Spencer hadn’t told Marv and Garth about the Manualis Custodem. He had simply explained the Rebels’ need to collect all three warlock hammers. Mr. Clean’s tool was the last one. After that, Spencer really didn’t know what to do. If Walter didn’t make it, hopefully Min would finish his translation and give them some guidance.
Dez suddenly veered downward and landed beside Spencer. “Umm, are the ceiling vents supposed to hang open like that?” He pointed upward with one hooked finger.
Spencer and the others turned their gaze toward the ceiling, and what they saw was absolutely terrible.
The vents were dangling open, and toilet-paper mummies were climbing silently through. Already TPs covered the lobby ceiling, clinging upside down like white spiders. At every breached point, dust billowed into Garth’s fortress.
As soon as the TPs realized they had been spotted, they began dropping from the ceiling, rappelling on long strands of toilet paper from their hands.
“How did they get in?” Daisy screamed.
“The ventilation system failed,” Marv answered, grabbing a pair of One-Plys and knocking them together. “Dust is pouring back into the building.”
In the chaos, Spencer lost sight of the weapons pile. A One-Ply struck him, sending him skidding across the hard tile. His Glopified coveralls protected him from the fall, and Daisy helped Spencer to his feet. Marv and Dez stood just feet away. Spencer scanned the sea of toilet-paper figures, but one person was nowhere to be found.
“Garth!” Spencer shouted. “Where’s Garth Hadley?”
Dez leapt into the air, his bloodshot eyes darting around the lobby. “Can’t see him!” shouted Dez. “He’s gone!”
Spencer felt his stomach sink with despair. If Garth Hadley had gone missing, Spencer had a bad feeling that he’d taken the leaf blower with him. He had to reach the weapons pile in the middle of the lobby!
Spencer charged forward, slamming past a One-Ply and dodging the hungry streamers of a shouting Two-Ply. He dropped to his knees, sliding across the smooth tile between a TP’s legs. The weapons pile came into view and Spencer’s heart calmed. The leaf blower was just where he’d left it.
Spencer snatched up his janitorial belt and flung it across his middle, cinching the buckle tightly. His pushbroom shimmered into view and he sent a trio of One-Plys drifting weightlessly up to the lobby ceiling.
“Daisy!” Spencer shouted, sliding the girl’s belt across the tile. She strapped it on and drew a dustpan shield.
Spencer checked his watch again. They were still a few minutes ahead of schedule, but using the leaf blower to blast a pathway out of the Dustbin might be their only chance of survival. Besides, Garth had run off, and they could make a quick escape without him.
Spencer hefted the leaf blower in both hands, calling for his friends to give him some cover while he fired up the device. Marv was wielding a borrowed pushbroom, and Daisy used a mop. Even Dez rallied around Spencer, using his talons to shred the TPs.
Spencer stared at the leaf blower in his hands, realizing for the first time that he had no idea how to turn the thing on.
“It’s cordless electric!” Marv shouted. “Just flip the switch!”
Spencer suddenly noticed the orange on/off switch by his thumb, feeling a little embarrassed that he hadn’t seen it sooner.
“All right,” Spencer shouted. He swung the leaf blower, angling the nose upward so it would blast a stream into the sky. “Here it goes!”
Spencer slid the switch into the on position and waited for the stream of air to roar out, ripping them a way out of the Dustbin. Instead, the leaf blower began to shudder and buck. It was malfunc
tioning. That much was obvious.
Spencer was struggling to hold on to the leaf blower when, all at once, it disintegrated in his grasp. It happened so suddenly that Spencer didn’t even have time to call out in surprise. One moment, he was holding the blower, and the next moment it was gone.
Their only way home had just vanished into a cloud of useless particles.
Chapter 43
“He deserves to die.”
Spencer swiped his hand through the little cloud of grit that had once been the Glopified leaf blower.
“What did you do?” Dez yelled.
“It just . . .” Spencer didn’t know what to say. “The leaf blower just turned to dust!”
Marv grunted. “That wasn’t the leaf blower.”
“What do you mean?” Daisy asked. They were retreating across the lobby, fighting waves of materializing TPs.
“Stuff from the real world doesn’t turn to dust like that,” Marv explained. “Hadley must have made a duplicate leaf blower and switched them out when the TPs attacked.”
Spencer felt awful. Once again, Garth Hadley had tricked him. Spencer should have predicted something like this. It was the same tactic Garth had used back in September when he was trying to steal the School Board. He’d swapped Spencer’s desk for a fake one, leading the Rebels to protect a useless piece of wood.
“So Garth has the real leaf blower?” Daisy said.
“Yep.” Marv seemed sure of it. “And you can bet he’s going to use it without us.”
“We’ve got to stop him!” Spencer said.
Marv was staring up at the ceiling. “I don’t think the ventilation system failed by accident,” he said.
“Are you saying that Garth let the mummies inside?” Daisy asked.
“A distraction,” Marv said, “so he could steal the leaf blower. Probably making his way to the upper floors where the vents are still working.”
Spencer looked across the lobby to the stairs where Garth had greeted them, but the staircase was gone. Somehow, during the TP attack, Garth had unimagined the stairs, replacing the way up with a sheer wall.
“Brooms!” Spencer said, handing his spare to Marv. Daisy threw a Palm Blast of vacuum dust, pinning the closest One-Ply, and the Rebels pushed across the lobby.
Dez was already flying up to the second floor, Spencer, Daisy, and Marv close behind. Below, the TPs scrambled over one another, trying to scale the vertical wall. Two-Plys were shouting commands in an effort to organize the half-witted One-Plys. The wall bought the Rebels some time to find Garth, but the TPs would be onto the second floor in no time.
The second story of Garth’s fortress was very different from the lobby. Here, an unattractive blue carpet covered the floor, and office cubicles filled the area.
Spencer led the way down one of the aisles, noticing that the small cubicles were empty. There must have been a hundred of them, creating the ideal place for Garth Hadley to hide while operating the leaf blower.
Spencer turned a corner, looked down a long aisle, and spotted the BEM rep standing in one of the farthest cubicles. Garth Hadley saw the approaching Rebels at the same moment. He responded by angling the leaf blower upward and flipping the switch.
The sound that rumbled from the depths of the Glopified leaf blower was astounding. It shot a visible streamer of wind with so much force that the cubicle walls around Garth Hadley exploded. The leaf blower kicked out of Garth’s hands, punching through carpet and embedding itself upright in the floor.
The air stream blasted a hole clean through the ceiling and continued upward, demolishing each floor it passed through until it smashed out the roof of Garth’s fortress.
The BEM rep rose to his feet. In the splintering destruction, Spencer hadn’t even noticed that Garth had been knocked aside. His shirt was whipping wildly as he stared up at the slipstream air current.
Spencer set off at a run, but he knew he wouldn’t be fast enough. A dark blur passed over his head. Sweeper Dez slammed into Garth Hadley, knocking him away from the escape stream.
In the next moment, Spencer was there, pinning Garth with a Funnel Throw of vac dust. On top of that, Daisy’s mop strings licked out, entangling the BEM rep and leaving him helpless on the floor.
Marv stood at the edge of the slipstream, his long hair caught in an updraft. Spencer understood the look on the big man’s face: a mixture of gratitude and disbelief that a way home had finally opened.
“What now?” Daisy yelled over the windy torrent.
Olin hadn’t explained it in his note, but the ride home seemed fairly obvious. “I think we jump into the wind and ride it up to the Rip,” Spencer said.
Marv and the three kids stood in a circle around the slipstream. It was much wider than the narrow nozzle of the leaf blower. Wide enough that even Marv would fit easily in the vertical wind tunnel.
Spencer was about to step forward when a choked cry came from behind.
“Wait!” It was Garth Hadley, struggling against the Glopified mop strings around his arms. “You can’t leave me here!”
Spencer couldn’t believe that Garth was begging. After all the tricks and deception, after attempting to use the leaf blower without them . . . now he was pleading for the Rebels to take him home.
“I’ll be your prisoner,” he begged. “I’ll do anything you ask.”
Daisy’s dad had once described people like Garth Hadley. Hadley was a chameleon, always changing his story and adding lies, like a lizard changed colors. Garth would say anything to anyone as long as he got his way.
Garth’s head suddenly turned, and Spencer followed his gaze across the floor. The TPs had reached the second floor. They were moving toward the group, ripping apart cubicle walls with their toilet-paper hands.
“You don’t know what they’ll do to me!” Garth continued. “Please! Show me some mercy!”
Marv stepped over to him, fist clenched. “How much mercy did you show your own workers? Didn’t she beg before you turned her over to the TPs?” Marv spat on the floor. “What goes around, comes around. Isn’t that what they say?”
But Marv’s words suddenly wrought the opposite effect in Daisy. She stepped over to Spencer, her large eyes full of sincerity. “We have to take him,” she said.
“What?” Spencer said. “He deserves to die.”
“If we leave him here, then we’re no better than he is,” Daisy continued. “If we’re really the good guys, shouldn’t we be good?”
Spencer had been in enough situations with Daisy to know when she was right. As much as he hated it, this was one of those moments. And he had to act fast with the TPs closing in.
Spencer took a knee in front of Garth Hadley. “All right,” he said. “We’ll take you home.”
Dez moaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me. . . .”
“But you go as our prisoner.” Spencer reached into his janitorial belt and withdrew a roll of Glopified duct tape to bind Garth Hadley’s hands and cover his mouth. Daisy uncoiled the mop strings, and Marv hoisted Hadley to his feet, holding the BEM rep in an iron grip.
Spencer ripped off the first length of duct tape. As he reached out to bind the man’s wrists, he noticed that something was wrong.
Garth Hadley was smiling.
“I think you’re missing something from your belt pouch, Spencer,” Garth said, freely offering his wrists. Spencer looked down.
Garth Hadley was wearing Spencer’s latex glove! He must have taken it when he had swapped the fake leaf blower.
Spencer shouted a warning, but Garth was already on the move. He slipped out of Marv’s grasp without any difficulty and leapt past Daisy and Dez. A victorious laugh escaped his lips as he jumped into the leaf blower’s airstream.
Spencer and the others watched in stunned horror as he rose, arms outstretched in the current and a smug grin on his face. But as he neared the ceiling of the second floor, his hand reached out a bit too far, dangling momentarily outside the slipstream.
In that moment, a
Two-Ply leapt from the top of a cubicle wall, flinging dual ribbons of toilet paper. The attack caught Garth Hadley’s exposed hand, finding solid grip now that the TPs had adapted to overcome the Glopified latex glove.
Garth was jerked from the slipstream, crying out in surprise as the Two-Ply reeled him in. The TP hit the floor, wrapping toilet paper around Garth Hadley’s body like a spider would wrap a fly. He managed to scream once, and then the toilet paper covered his face and head.
All was silent for a moment as the Two-Ply hunched over its bundled prey. Then the mummy reared back, tearing away the bindings and dropping Garth Hadley to the floor.
Daisy screamed at the sight of the BEM rep, and Spencer shut his eyes. Even Dez looked horrified by the sudden turn of events.
Garth Hadley was not the man he’d been a moment ago. All that remained of him was a lifeless skeleton.
A pile of dusty bones.
Chapter 44
“Where are the Rebels?”
Spencer was too shocked to move. He stood rooted in place, unaware that the oncoming TPs were about to do to him what they’d just done to Garth Hadley. All around them, the office building began to deteriorate, unable to hold its form after the death of its creator.
Rough hands caught Spencer by the shoulders, shaking him back to reality. “Keep your arms and legs tucked close,” Marv said. Then the janitor tossed him directly into the leaf-blower slipstream.
Spencer felt a strong upward pull that tempted him to throw out his arms to stabilize himself. But he remembered Marv’s warning, and the memory of Garth’s demise was fresh.
Spencer kept his arms at his sides and shot upward like Superman. He passed through the crumbling ceiling of the second floor, gathering speed as he rose. Garth’s building was coming down, the upper floors already dissolved back into the dust from which they were made.
Carefully, Spencer craned his neck downward to find Daisy and Dez rising beneath him. Marv had also entered the slipstream, struggling to keep his broad shoulders inside the air current.
In seconds, they were clear of the crumbling building. The slipstream paved a clean pathway upward, throwing aside dust particles and giving the Rebels safe passage. Spencer saw a number of TPs materialize in the hazy air, only to plummet to the ground when they failed to reach into the air current.