Edison’s Alley (19 page)

In the backyard, things got even more interesting. Behind where the house used to stand was a detached garage. It was still there, but only partially.

Vince knew that Nick was on the premises when the house disappeared. He’d been standing right at the front door. The woman inside had possessed one of Tesla’s devices, although Nick
hadn’t known which one.

Vince made his way around the crater to the garage. The front half of the structure had been sheared clean away, and inside he could see half of an old refrigerator, half of a lawn mower, and
half of a bunch of other things you’d find in a garage. Lucky for Nick, thought Vince, that the Teslanoid Object had been positioned toward the back of the house so its field extended only to
the front door. Had it been any closer, half of Nick might have been taken instead of half the garage.

Vince knocked on the doors of a few surrounding homes.

At the first few houses, no one answered. Either the owners weren’t home, or they didn’t want to deal with the creepy dude on their front step.

Finally one door opened for him. The woman at the threshold looked somewhat like a dried apple, with big hair the color of faded cotton candy.

“Wha’cha sellin’?” she asked, and before Vince could answer, she added, “Whatever it is, I don’t need it anyway, but I’ve got a couple bagels in the
toaster, so you might as well come in.” She led him to her kitchen. “The only visitors I get,” she noted, “are people who want my money.”

“Is that so?” Vince asked politely.

“Including my relatives,” she added as she served him the bagel with a dollop of whipped cream cheese. Vince wondered fleetingly how well he would digest it before he decided his
undead intestines would just have to deal.

“Okay, give me your pitch,” the old woman said, “and it better be good.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not selling anything and I don’t want your money. I just want to pick your brain.”

“Not much left to pick, sorry to say,” she told him with a laugh. “That field’s gone to seed.”

Vince suspected she had more up there than she gave herself credit for. “I’d love to know about the person who owned the house,” he said. “The one that
disappeared.”

The old woman took a bite of her bagel and chewed it slowly. “That would be Sheila McNee,” she said finally. “Used to play bridge with her until she got too high-and-mighty for
the rest of us.”

“So you’re not in touch?” Vince asked.

The old woman shook her head. “I haven’t heard hide nor hair from her since…the incident. These strange G-men in funny suits came by asking questions. Told us her house went
up in a freak quantum event.” Then she leaned a little closer. “But there was nothing freak about it. It was the globe.”

Vince’s ears perked up. Immediately he remembered a globe at the garage sale. Metallic, with the landmasses engraved into it. He might have considered buying it himself, had the battery
not been calling out to him, for what turned out to be obvious reasons.

“The globe…” he repeated, prompting her to continue.

“I never told them about it, if that’s what you’re asking. But something tells me you’re the one who needs to know.” She took another thoughtful bite. “She
said it took her places.”

“Where?” Vince asked.

“Anywhere,” the old woman said, “everywhere. I thought she was nuts. Right until the day she vanished along with that dust trap of a house.”

“Do you know where she might have gone?” Vince asked.

“Well,” said the old woman, “she was always threatening to go back to Scotland, where she grew up. Said we Americans had grown ‘a wee bit tiresome.’”

Vince took the last bite of his bagel, thanked her, and left. There was no doubt in his mind that what the woman had told him was true. And if he did have any doubts, all he had to do was take
out his own copy of the
Planetary Times
and turn to page 17. Next to the article about the new alien Mafia was a grainy, blurry photograph of a suburban house, much like the other houses on
this block, that had been spotted by scuba-diving monster hunters at the very bottom of Loch Ness.

Vince returned home with an uncharacteristic bounce in his step. Just because
he
knew where the globe was didn’t mean Nick had to know. And as long as it remained lost at the bottom
of a lake a continent away, Nick could never complete Tesla’s machine.

Which meant he’d never come to Vince for the battery.

W
hile Vince spent the rest of his day luxuriating in the secret knowledge that he was safe, Nick was trying to avoid busy intersections and
hospitals and any other place where a sudden loss of electricity might be a serious problem. He was forced to take a weaving path back home.

Had he thought about the power station, he would have avoided it as well. But, as fate would have it, he rode his bicycle within ten feet of its largest transformer, which was obscured by an ivy
trellis. When Nick got too close, all of the nearby homes and businesses went dark. And, with the sudden overload of stolen energy, Nick’s left shoe burst into flames.

He leaped from his bicycle, rolled in the grass, ripped off his shoe, and flung it into the street—where it stalled every car that attempted to pass.

Now that the shoe was far enough away from the transformer, the area lights blinked back on. Nick approached the smoking remains of his poor Converse. Gingerly he picked it up, and he found the
most damaged spot on the left side of the sole.

He bent the sneaker back, cracking the rubber open, and pulled out a small, shiny microchip that had been underfoot all day.

Getting the chip onto Nick’s person had been Petula’s crowning achievement of the week.

She knew she couldn’t hide it anywhere in his clothes, because boys do occasionally change their clothes. She couldn’t embed it under his skin, because he would have noticed the
excruciating pain. Then, when they were in the attic, Nick took off his sneakers, finally giving Petula her opportunity. Shoving it into one of the soles while everyone else was watching Mitch turn
into the Incredible Hulk had been a stroke of genius.

She had no idea what the chip would do when she activated it later, using a remote code.

“It won’t damage him,” the Grand Acceleratus had assured her. “It will just remind him that we are ever-present, and ever-watching.”

After she had successfully planted the device, she reported to Ms. Planck, as instructed.

“If you continue to impress Dr. Jorgenson,” Ms. Planck told Petula as they unloaded buckets of foodstuff from her minivan and wheeled them to the cafeteria, “you’ll rise
in the ranks in no time.” Then she smiled at her. “I’m proud of you, Petula. You’ll make a difference in this world.”

The foodstuff, Ms. Planck explained, was pressed plankton, which took on the flavor of whatever you mixed it with.

“Isn’t there an old sci-fi movie where everyone’s eating pressed plankton—but it turns out to be made out of people?” Petula asked.

“Don’t worry,” the lunch lady said with a laugh, “people are currently much more expensive than plankton.”

Petula wondered to herself if “currently” implied there would be a time when they weren’t. She decided it was best not to entertain that line of thought. She concluded that if
they ever did start serving people, Ms. Planck might be the first to go, since her name was halfway to plankton already.

Petula watched as the green foodstuff magically became beef ragout and chicken a la king. “It’s twice as nutritious,” Ms. Planck told her. “A better world through
proprietary technology,” she intoned. “In other words, technology that
we
own.”

This was one of the Accelerati’s many, many mottos.

“What do you suppose the Grand Acceleratus will want me to do next?” Petula asked, anxious for an answer, but fearing it as well.

“Whatever it is,” Ms. Planck said, with a penetrating look, “you’ll do it.” Then she smiled and handed her a healthy portion of plankton à la king.

Theo was no idiot. He was as clever as he needed to be, when it served him to be so—and when it came to the grand buffet of revenge, Petula was not the only one in line.
Theo was ready to dish himself up a heaping serving of “chow mean.”

His relationship with Caitlin, which was never all that great to begin with, had finally ended, formally and officially. He was relieved, really—the world almost ending had given him pause
for thought. Why cling to one girl just because she was beautiful and popular? Who needed a trophy girlfriend when he had a shelf full of actual trophies? The problem was the undeniable sense of
humiliation. To be dumped for Nick Slate was unbearable. It was, as they say, adding insulin to injury. It simply could not stand.

Being a thorn in Slate’s side was not enough—he had to be the entire rosebush. He had to surround Slate in so many thorny brambles that the slightest move would slash him to
bits.

Theo knew there was some secret business going on with Nick. The way he always spoke in hushed whispers to his friends. The way odd things had started happening as soon as he moved into the
neighborhood. If Theo could get to the bottom of it, and find some key bit of information, he knew it would be worthy of blackmail. Then he’d have Nick exactly where he wanted him.

So Theo kept his eyes and ears open, and he finally struck gold when Nick’s friend Vince walked away from his locker without remembering to lock it. Once the hallway had cleared, Theo
scavenged through the locker, looking for something incriminating. He hadn’t really expected to find anything, because Vince was on the periphery of Nick’s circle of friends. Then he
saw the official-looking document that was taped inside the locker the way other people put up posters. Theo didn’t know what to make of it at first, but when he pulled it out and read it,
the truth became alarmingly clear.

It was Vince’s death certificate.

Not a fake either, but the real deal, with an embossed government stamp and everything. Theo knew this could only mean one thing:

Zombie apocalypse.

While Nick’s left shoe was bursting into flames, Theo was hiding behind a tree at Nick’s house, waiting to pounce. Unfortunately, Theo had grown bored and was
playing a game on his phone. When it suddenly flickered out, lifeless, as it had so many times at school that day, Theo became preoccupied with it, and Nick caught him by surprise instead of the
other way around.

“Theo, what are you doing here?”

Startled, Theo fumbled his phone. It bounced off of Nick’s oddly bare foot.

“Ouch,” Nick said.

Nick only had one shoe on. The other was a melted mess in his hand.

“Aha!” Theo said. He wasn’t sure what his
Aha!
was about, but anyone holding a melted shoe had to be up to something blackmail-able.

“If you’re here to talk baseball with my dad, he’s not home. Come back later. Like after the next ice age.” Nick limped into his house. He tried to close the door behind
him, but Theo wedged his foot in.

“You think I don’t have a clue,” Theo said. “But I know everything.”

That satisfyingly stopped Nick in his tracks. He turned back to Theo. “What, exactly, do you know?”

And Theo pulled out his exhibit A. “One death certificate, sealed and signed by the county recorder, for—drum roll—Vincent LaRue.”

Nick stepped closer, gazed at the death certificate with what seemed an acceptable level of worry, then said, “So what?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Theo said. “You’re behind a zombie apocalypse!”

Nick looked at him with horror. At least Theo thought it was horror, until Nick impatiently pointed out, “You can’t have a zombie apocalypse with only one zombie.”

“Aha!” Theo shouted, finally having a reason to shout it. “So you admit it! Vince is a zombie!”

“Not exactly,” Nick said. “Zombies rot continually. Vince only rotted once, and he’s getting over it.” He held up the melted shoe. “Look, I’ve got other
stuff to deal with right now, okay?”

But Theo had Nick where he wanted him. “Of course, I could keep this whole zombie thing to myself…under one condition…” Theo paused for dramatic effect, and then, to
his own surprise, kept on pausing.

“Well,” asked Nick, “what do you want?”

What
do
I want?
Theo wondered.
What do I
really
want?
Telling Nick to stay away from Caitlin wasn’t enough. Telling him to disappear off the face of the earth
was getting close, but on the other hand, what a waste of a good blackmailing that would be. The skilled extortionist could keep his prey on the end of a string like a yo-yo, yanking at will. Nick
could be that yo-yo.

“Just do what I tell you,” he managed, “when I tell you to do it.” Theo figured that would allow him enough time to figure out what he wanted from Nick, and to learn
proper blackmail skills.

Nick shook his head. “I really don’t have time for this.”

Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out his keys, and pushed a button on a little oval fob; it glowed soft blue. It was the only electronic device in the house that seemed to be working at
the moment.