Danger Guys
Hit the Beach
Tony Abbott
illustrated by Joanne Scribner
With love for Lucy,
my littlest pal,
who keeps me young
ONE
“Did I say this was boring?”
That was my best friend, Zeek Pilinsky. He was leaning back on his elbows, staring out across the hot beach.
“Yeah,” I said. “Twice.” I was lying next to him on a beach blanket.
I had just flipped another page of Adventure magazine. But I wasn’t really reading it anymore. I had started to doze off.
“Well, I take it back,” Zeek said. “This isn’t boring. This is deadly!”
I had to agree. Nothing was happening. It was all just kids with buckets, and parents talking.
“Come on, Noodle! You’re the guy with all the bright ideas. You’ve got to think of something!”
I usually do think of something. I am the guy with all the bright ideas. That’s why everybody calls me Noodle. And Zeek, he’s the guy with all the muscles. That’s why they call him … well … anyway, we’re pretty much a team.
“Noodle, we need something different. Something fun. You know, something exciting!”
“Zeek,” I said. “What you really mean is …”
“Yeah. Something DANGEROUS!”
I know how he feels. In the past couple of months, we’ve brushed with death no less than thirteen times. We’re Danger Guys. We live the life of danger.
Well, we did. Until now.
“How about something like this?” I cracked open the magazine to a picture of two people in underwater diving suits.
“The Emersons!”
Yeah, it was Mr. and Mrs. Emerson. They were the famous husband-and-wife exploring team we had met fighting treasure thieves.
“Now that adventure was different, fun, exciting, and dangerous!” I said.
“Right. But this?” Zeek said, looking out at the water. “If this keeps up, we won’t be Danger Guys anymore. We’ll have to call ourselves …”
“Cheeseburgers?”
My dad said that. He and my mom had just come back from the snack stand with a pile of burgers, some sodas, and a few bags of chips.
“All right, Mr. Newton.” Zeek laughed. “You can call us cheeseburgers, just don’t call us late for lunch!” Zeek grabbed a burger right off the top and stuffed it in his mouth.
“Listen, boys,” my mom said. “If you’re looking for something to do, you might watch those surfers over there.” She pointed down the beach to a bunch of guys with ponytails.
“I just heard them talking about something called the Golden Crest. You might ask them …”
Zeek grabbed my hand just as I was about to chomp my burger.
“Golden …?” he gasped.
“… Crest?” I whispered.
“Do you think it’s a ship? A sunken ship?”
“If there’s a ship, there must be treasure! Sunken treasure!”
Zeek and I shot up from the sand like rockets.
“Noodle, we’ve got to check this out!”
“Yeah, and we’ve got to go under cover.”
“Good call, Nood!”
We wrapped a couple of my mom’s scarves around our heads like bandanas. Then we each slid on a pair of mirrored sunglasses.
“Are we cool, or are we cool!” said Zeek.
We were cool. And we were ready.
A minute later we were at the surfer camp. One of the guys was strumming a guitar. Another was playing bongos. A third was carrying a surfboard to a motorboat sitting in the water.
Zeek nudged me. “I’m the muscle man, remember?” He flexed his arms. “Just let me do all the talking.”
I nodded. Sometimes Zeek knows best. Sometimes he really surprises me. Like just now, when he walked up to the surfer with the board and started talking to him.
“Hail, surfer dude!” shouted Zeek. “Slide any choice channels lately?”
My mouth fell open. That’s Zeekie—a guy of many talents.
The surfer dropped his board and hugged us. “Fellow wave dogs! People call me Boomer.”
“Boomer?” I said.
“Funny, huh? Like, boom, suddenly they call me that.” Then he laughed. It sounded like a small explosion.
Zeek couldn’t wait anymore. “So, dig that Golden Crest, huh?”
“Yeah! We were just going to motor out to it.”
“Like, what is it?” Zeek said, nodding his head. “Spanish galleon? Dutch schooner?”
“Killer question!” said Boomer.
“I don’t know, though,” Zeek went on. “Golden Crest sounds English. A warship, maybe?”
“No, mini-dude. It’s a wave!”
“Whaaa …?” Zeek looked like he does when Mr. Strunk gives us homework on the weekend. His mouth hung open, and his eyes went hazy.
I tried to help him out. “You mean the Golden Crest is not a sunken treasure ship?”
“No, mini-dude! It’s a wave. But what a wave! Like—boom—it comes from nowhere. And you ride it for miles!”
“Yeah, well, no thanks,” Zeek finally said. Then he bent over to look at Boomer’s surfboard.
“Where is this wave?” I asked.
“Out by the island. There.” Boomer pointed out across the water to a tiny dot of land. “But you’ve gotta watch out for the Ugly Dude.”
“Is that another wave?” Zeek snorted.
“Unh-uh! A sea monster that lives near the island. Ugly. Huge bug eyes. Big snapping claws!”
“But there aren’t any sea monsters,” I said.
That’s when Zeek did this really dumb thing. For a guy who is so good at sports, he did something incredibly clutzy.
“Noodle,” he said. “Check it out!”
I turned to see Zeek holding up Boomer’s huge green surfboard. It was about ten feet tall.
“You can call me …” Wham! The board slid in the sand and slammed down on Zeek.
And on me. We both fell facedown into the motorboat with the board on top of us.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
When Zeek fell on me, his foot hit this little switch on the motor.
Vrrrooom! The motor burst into life.
The propeller hit the water.
And we took off like a jet-powered racing boat.
TWO
“Hey, mini-dudes! My boat! My board! Come back!”
Sure. If we could. But we couldn’t.
When Zeek hit that switch on the motor, he jammed it. There was no way to stop the boat.
“Noodle! Can’t you stop this boat?”
He also jammed the rudder so there was no way to steer it either.
“Can’t you at least steer it?”
I was about to make a face when—wham!—the boat’s nose bounced high off a wave.
“Whoa!” shouted Zeek. “This is like sledding on rocks!”
“Well,” I snapped back. “You wanted something different!”
“Yeah, but … Noodle, watch out!”
I whirled around.
Through the spray I could see a lady on water skis. She was crossing right in front of us.
She had a really big smile until she saw us. Then her smile kind of went away. Her mouth dropped open. And she screamed.
That’s when I saw the towrope.
“Duck!” I shouted to Zeek.
Vooom! Our boat shot under the towrope just in front of the lady’s skis.
I looked back. The lady was still screaming.
I turned to Zeek and gave him the thumbs-up.
He usually smiles when I do that. Not this time. He had a really strange look on his face.
“NOOOOODLE!”
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I turned around. A huge iron buoy bobbled in the water just ahead. I jammed my eyes shut.
Wump! We hit a wave at incredibly the right time and incredibly the wrong way. We shot into the air and cleared the buoy by three feet.
Bam! Then we landed and really took off. Spray shot straight up on both sides of the boat. I could barely hold on. If I had eaten my cheeseburger, I sure would have lost it then.
“Okay,” I yelled. “You wanted different, you got it. But it’s not fun. So let’s stop now, okay?”
Zeek made a face, braced himself against the side, and kicked the motor with all his strength.
Sputt! The motor died. Everything went quiet.
“Hey, I said stop it, not kill it.”
Zeek shrugged and smiled. “Don’t know my own strength, I guess.”
“Yeah, well, great. Now how are we going to get back?” I looked all around.
It had been a short ride, but a fast one. I couldn’t even see the beach. We were drifting out to sea. The only thing anywhere near us was a small patch of land.
“Hey, what’s that?” Zeek asked. “Japan?”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “That must be the island Boomer was talking about. Let’s swim for it.”
“No thanks. I hate getting all wet, remember?”
“Oh yeah, I forgot.”
“Anyway,” he said, “we’re better off staying in the boat. We’ll be spotted sooner.”
“No problem, pal,” I smiled. “We’ll just sit here in the … Say, what is the name of this boat, anyway?” I looked over the side. “Oh-oh.”
“Oh-oh what?” Zeek read the name. “Gilligan? He named it the Gilligan? Oh, we’re doomed. We’ll be marooned here forever, eating tree bark and seaweed, while everybody else gets to go to the movies and eat cheeseburgers!”
“Hey, don’t talk to me about burgers. I didn’t get to eat mine, remember?”
“You can forget about lunch,” Zeek said. “The next meal we’ll have will be breakfast. If we’re lucky.”
“And don’t start me thinking about—Hey, what’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“This water in the boat. Was it always here?”
“Water? In the boat? Man the lifeboat!”
“Zeek, this is the lifeboat. Man the surfboard!”
I tossed the board over, and we jumped on.
It was slippery. We were trying to sit up on it, when—
“Rooaaarrr!”
Out of nowhere rose this giant black … thing! It was all slimy. It had a long snout. Huge bulging eyes. Two snaky with claws on the ends of them.
“The Ugly Dude!”
The claws snapped open and shut.
They were snapping at us.
And they were getting closer.
“Paddle!” I yelled. “Fast!”
THREE
Zeek paddled with all his strength.
So did I.
Only we weren’t paddling the same way.
So we didn’t move.
But the sea monster did.
RRRRRRRR! The snake arms shot out again from each side of the monster’s belly. They kept grabbing for us.
“Zeekie! It’s going to eat us!”
Then, as if we dreamed it—whoosh—the monster vanished beneath the water. The air was still. It was just Zeek and me on the surfboard.
“Noodle?” Zeek said. “Have we died and gone to surfer heaven? I mean, was there just a sea monster here? Or not?”
I looked all around. I was about to smile and give Zeek the thumbs-up, but I stopped.
Like they say, we were still in hot water.
Or at least, bubbling water.
The water began to churn all around us. It turned white and started to swell.
“Oh, no!” I cried. “The Golden Crest!”
Whoom! We were lifted up on the crest of a giant wave. It must have been thirty feet high.
The surfboard teetered at the top like a seesaw. Then the wave curled and crashed.
Shoooooom! Down we went. We hung on to the board as long as we could before it flipped over.
Wham! The board slammed into a rock, bounced up, shot back over the wave, and landed in the motorboat. Then the boat rode the wave back toward the beach where we started.
“Hey! Maybe we should have stayed—”
Wham. Wham. That’s when Zeek and I hit the water. Hard.
It seemed like ten minutes before the wave threw us up on the island. And I mean threw up! Yuck! We were totally soaked and covered with slimy sea junk.
When we finally got to our feet, the wave was gone, and the sea was calm again.
“This is all too weird,” I said.
“Yeah,” Zeek said. “Like—boom!” He grinned and looked around. “Well, Nood, here we are, on your favorite little island. Now what?”
I scoped things out. The island was bigger than it looked at first. Beyond the beach it got pretty thick with bushes and trees. And there was a hill with a tall tree in the middle of it.
“Okay,” I said, pointing up to the top. “That’s where we set up camp.”
“Camp? But we’ve got to be rescued soon. Shouldn’t we stay on the beach?”
“No way, buddy. First, the next wave might be bigger. Second, we can signal from up there. And third, don’t forget about the sea monster. Maybe it’s a land monster too.”
Zeek didn’t like that idea. “Okay, skipper,” he said, trying to smile. “Let’s climb.”
We crossed the beach, pushed aside some branches, and walked inland. It was thick, like a jungle. And hot, too.
Big leaves flapped our faces. Long, stringy vines dangled from tall trees. We could hear these crazy, screechy birdcalls all around us.
“Can you believe it, Zeek?” I said, slapping a mosquito on my neck. “We could be a thousand miles from Mayville!”
“Yeah, trekking where no one has been before. I love it.”
We wound our way through the jungle to the top of the hill. I was starting to feel like my old self again.
“Listen, Zeek,” I said. “I’ve been thinking. Real waves don’t just come from nowhere.”
“Yeah, and what about real sea monsters?”
“Them either. I don’t know what that thing was, but mmrrrumf …”
Zeek suddenly put his hand over my mouth. “Shhh!” he whispered.
We crouched on the ground. I peered through the leaves.
“Look at that,” Zeek whispered. He pointed up ahead.
I followed his finger. “Zeek, it’s called a tree. It’s a pretty tall tree, but it’s only a tree.”
“No, Noodle. I mean, that!” He pointed to the trunk of the tree about ten feet up from the ground. There was a plank nailed into the trunk. Two feet above that was another plank. And then another and another, all the way to the top.
“Tree house!” I yelled.
“Mega tree house!” Zeek yelled.
FOUR
“Awesome!” Zeek gasped as we scrambled up onto a platform in the tree house. “Just look at this setup. I could live here forever.”
It was cool, for sure.
We stood in a little room. In the middle was a table made from a small door. A hammock of leaves and vines hung in the corner.
“Nobody has lived here for a long time,” I said, looking around the room.
Zeek stepped over and swung himself onto the hammock. Wump! It collapsed on the floor.
“Hey, be careful. This stuff is way old. The whole place might fall apart with us in it.” I wiped a thick layer of gunk from the table.
“Let’s explore the rest,” Zeek said.
A winding set of stairs ran around the tree up to another level. I tested the stairs. They wobbled a little, but we went up anyway.
We stepped out on an open deck. It had a seat and a shelf built into the tree.
“Cool. This could be your station, Noodle. It’s even got a place to put your books.”
“Great, Zeek,” I said, lookin
g over the side to the jungle way down below. “But let’s think about making a signal now.”
“Yeah, in a minute. I bet the real exciting stuff goes on up there!” Zeek pointed up to the top level. It was twenty feet higher up the tree, and the only way to get there was a skinny rope ladder.
“Um … Zeek?” I gulped. “There’s something I never really told you.”
“Yeah? What’s that, buddy?”
“I don’t like going too high. I keep thinking I’m going to fall. Sorry, I know it’s pretty bad for a Danger Guy, but …”
“Hey, no problem,” Zeek said. “There are things I don’t like. But that’s why we’re such a great team. Between us, we can do everything.”
Zeek smiled and slapped me on the back. “Come on, buddy, let’s go up. I’ll keep you safe.” The rope swung back and forth as we climbed. It made me kind of sick.
Finally we reached the top platform.
Then we saw it.
“Holy cow!” I gasped. “It’s Mayville! You can see the entire coast from here!”
The view was unbelievable. Across the wide blue water was our town. The beach, the mall, everything.
“Right,” Zeek said. “And just look at this.”
He pointed to the roof over the platform. It was a piece of ship’s sail tied to some branches with strips of vine. “A shade roof. Isn’t this neat? I mean, who made this incredible tree house?”
We didn’t have to look far for an answer. On the floor was an old wooden chest. There were some words carved on the outside. I brushed the carving with my hand.
“It says, ‘Captain John May, 1785.’”
“May? May!” Zeek looked at me. “You mean May, as in Mayville?”
“I can’t believe it! He was shipwrecked, remember? Mr. Strunk told us that in class. He must have been marooned right here!”
“Cool! And he probably looked over there and said, ‘Someday they’ll call that Mayville!’”
“Something like that,” I said. I went to open the chest.
“Wait a second, Noodle.” Zeek put his hand on the chest. “Maybe we shouldn’t. I saw this movie once where they put a guy …”
“Look, it’s a treasure chest, right? It’s probably full of gold. It’s got to be.”
“Or maybe it’s full of bones. Maybe the guy who built this tree house is in there, all rotten.”
I didn’t say anything. I just wiped away the dust and waited.