Badd Read Free Page B

captain first. Isn’t that what Bobby would do?
    But I’m here. And Gillis and Tillman are out in the woods waiting, expecting things from me. I can’t cut and run.
    The dark shapes of the sculptures gaze down on me, giving off this feeling like the captain is judging me through them. I stare back hard, determined, and the captain’s song bursts back into my brain—
War is the coward’s way
. Well, my brother’s no coward and neither am I.
    I’m right to be here, I tell myself. It’s too late for doubts. Like I said, Revenge is for the mighty.
    I whistle the attack signal as loud as I can.
    Gillis and Tillman charge from the woods, and I dart out from behind the truck, firing one ball after another, splattering the fat boy and the robot, the front of the house, and the porch steps. Globs of orange paint blossom everywhere, like mutant peaches. We’re all laughing, but at the same time, ready to run into the sanctuary of the woods if Captain Crazy tries to chase us.
    Then the lights in his house flick on.
    Expecting the door to fly open, I half turn toward the tree line, but nothing happens. Inside the house, a dog barks like wild, but everything else is as still as a tombstone. None of us fire another shot. Something’s up. We can feel it—some kind of Captain Crazy weirdness.
    Suddenly a voice rises up over the dog’s bark, a long, ripping cry, so loud and metallic it must have come through a bullhorn. “Yaaaahhhhhhh!”
    “Holy crap,” says Gillis.
    Then the bullhorn voice goes, “Stop in the name of thenine prophets of the Yimmies. You are surrounded by titanium angels. There is no escape.”
    I look at the silhouettes of Gillis and Tillman.
    “I’m gone,” says Tillman, and just that fast his silhouette tears for the trees.
    “I’m behind you,” says Gillis, and there he goes too.
    Me, I’m not backing down so easy. Besides, I haven’t achieved my main goal yet—to smack a big orange splotch dead in the middle of the front door. I raise my rifle to take aim when the bullhorn screeches again.
    “Search yourself for your inner heaven or end up stuck in limbo!”
    This is weird. Now the voice is coming from a new place, somewhere near the fat boy, just behind it, maybe. I can’t figure out how he could have got there so quick.
    I fire my last shot, but I don’t know whether I hit the door because I’m too startled by that weird voice crying out again, a long wail like something dead and come back, and this time it sounds even closer. Fast as I can, I sprint to the lime-green truck and crouch by one of the tires. Footsteps crunch in the gravel close by, and the dog’s bark starts up again, only he’s not in the house anymore. I can’t tell exactly where he is, maybe behind me. Maybe the captain is closing in from one side and his dog’s coming from the other. They’re tricky, but I’m trickier. I slide under the truck, where nobody can see me from either side.
    For a long time, the place is quiet. Then I hear the soft trot of the dog’s feet, probably about ten yards away. He circles the truck once and stops. I know he’s sure to smell me, but I don’t know which side of the truck I should scramble out from without running into the captain.
    The dog begins to growl, the kind of low growl that startsway back in the throat and gets louder as it rumbles forward. The next thing I know, he’s at the side of the truck, his muzzle thrusting in next to one of the tires, the growls busting into full barks. He paws at the dirt and snaps in my direction. From what I can tell, he’s not too big to crawl right under here with me and have my face for dinner.
    There’s nothing to do except explode out from the other side of the truck and make a run for the trees, hoping the captain won’t see me. The dog squeezes his head and shoulders under the truck as I roll out the other side. I hop up and run, dodge around the winged giraffe, and smack hard into Captain Crazy’s chest.
    He grips the bullhorn