Darkness Creeping Read Free Page A

There were batons and police lights, but none of them could be retooled for Marty’s big scheme . . . until he saw the spike strip rolled up in the corner. Marty had seen spike strips before. In a police pursuit, they were rolled out in front of a speeding car to pop the tires and bring the chase to an end. Mom and Dad had used the strip once to stop Marty’s older sister from sneaking out at night—but it was only effective the first time. This is exactly what he needed! Maybe he couldn’t stop the ice-cream man, but four flat tires would slow him down to a crawl! With surprising stealth and cunning, Marty set his trap, and waited until he could spring it.

    Fables tell of a tortoise who manages to beat a hare in a race.
    The hare started out in the lead, but he was so sure of his victory that he took a nap as he neared the finish line, and slept while the tortoise slowly but surely took the gold. Of course, in reality, the hare was probably eaten by a pack of wolves, and that’s why the tortoise won the race, because, after all, nature is cruel, but it doesn’t lessen the moral of the story: slow and steady (and a really hard, fang-proof shell) wins the race.
    This was a lesson Marty always took to heart. He was always last. He was always behind—but in the end Marty always reached his goal—and he had a tough enough shell to ignore the bites and pecks of others who would much rather see him fail.
    Marty waited with uncommon patience until July Fourth, when at 8:40 in the evening, he heard a familiar tune piercing the twilight. He wasted no time—he started his stopwatch and ran into the street.
    The streets were deserted, as everyone had gone down to the lake to watch the fireworks that would be starting at any moment. It would be perfect! There was no one to get in Marty’s way!
    Instead of following the music, as he usually did, he ran across the street, through two backyards, until he came out onto another street. His neighborhood was like a maze—streets that wound back and forth. It was easy to get lost if you didn’t know where you were going.There were only two entrances into Marty’s subdivision. A vehicle moving at the breakneck speed of sixty miles per hour could wind through the streets from one entrance to another in exactly one minute and forty-five seconds.
    By cutting through backyards, he got to the first entrance in fifty seconds. Sitting there, on the sloped street, was his sister’s car. His sister had recently gotten her license, and was forced, in spite of the utter embarrassment of it, to drive their mother’s old Buick station wagon. Marty had promised her his dessert for three weeks if she would just park her car in this exact spot.
    Now he pulled open the door, put the car in neutral, and moved away from it. It began to roll backward, where it hit a plastic trash bin resting in the gutter across the street. Marty had positioned that trash bin there, and filled it with bricks, so it would stop the rolling car. It did the job. Now the station wagon was blocking all traffic in and out of the neighborhood.
    As for the Creamy-Cold truck, it had come in from the other entrance. It would try to get out this way in exactly twenty-five seconds. When it couldn’t, it would have to turn around to go out the way it came. Even as he ran from the station wagon, he could hear the truck drawing nearer. But he didn’t wait for it. Not here.
    He took off again, stumbled over a picket fence, then crossed through more backyards, until he emerged on the other end of the subdivision. By now the ice-cream truck had tried to escape, but the station wagon would have blocked its path. It would be heading this way now. In fact, he could hear the music growing louder.
    He pulled out the spike strip, which he had hidden under a hedge, and rolled it out so that it spanned the entire width of the street.
    His timing was perfect, because ten seconds later, he saw with his own eyes, for the first time in his life,