Floors #2: 3 Below (14 page)

“Cotton candy!” Remi howled. He was in heaven.

It was a lot of fun, but Leo had been watching the ants and thinking about Mr. Carp and Ms. Sparks and the hotel and the things he should have been getting. He was more of a worrier than Remi was.

“Dr. Flart, can I ask you now about the things we need?” Leo interrupted. “And about the ants? They’re big.”

Dr. Flart and Remi stopped laughing and carrying on.

“Don’t worry about the ants — they can’t get out. Unless I let them out.”

Leo gulped. “But you’re not going to do that, right? I mean, you don’t have to walk them or feed them or anything? They stay in there?”

“That they do. They have a purpose, you see. But I’m guessing you already know that.”

Merganzer hadn’t said anything about giant ants or Glooooob or a lot of things. Remi shot Leo in the ear with Flooooob, then stuffed the tube down Leo’s maintenance overalls and kept filling them up until his stomach stuck out like a giant balloon.

“Ha ha ha,” Leo said, punching himself in the stomach and sending Flooooob into the air like giant globs of pink shaving cream. Seconds later, it was gone, fizzled away into thin air.

“What we need,” Leo said, “are four Floogers and the iron box.”

Dr. Flart had just taken a huge tap hit of Zooooob and he sprayed it in Leo’s general direction.

“Four Floogers and the iron box?” he said, clearly upset. “Are you sure that’s what Merganzer asked for? Not something else?”

Leo was starting to wonder about the Floogers and the box. Ingrid had reacted in pretty much the same way.

“That’s what he said, I’m sure. Ask Remi, he’ll tell you.”

“It’s true,” Remi said. “And a six-pack of Flart’s Fizz.”

“Remi.” Leo’s eyes narrowed.

“Okay, I made that part up. He wants a case. No wait,
ten
cases!”

Leo rolled his eyes and Remi laughed.

“Four Floogers,” Dr. Flart mused to himself. He stood up. “
And
the iron box? Something big is happening. Something huge.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” Leo asked. “What’s Merganzer got you doing down here?”

Dr. Flart shook his head as if he’d been dreaming and touched the wall of glass where a four-feet-long ant was crawling by.

“Merganzer D. Whippet is my benefactor. In other words, he pays for everything. He set this laboratory in motion.”

There was a sadness in his voice, like something terrible was about to happen to his work.

“What’s wrong, Dr. Flart?” Remi asked.

Clyde made a series of sad beeping sounds.

“It’s just . . . well, I’ve been working for a long time. But it appears my work may have come to an end.”

“No way!” Remi said. “You’ve got to make more gastromagical stuff! You can’t stop now!”

“My dear boy, I’m afraid this is all just for fun, to pass the time. The real work has been done for months.”

“The Floogers and the iron box?”

Dr. Flart nodded slowly, looking in at the ants once more.

“Tell us, Dr. Flart. What’s a Flooger?” Leo asked.

“And what’s the iron box for?” Remi added, his mood shifting as things turned more serious.

“It’s a lot of power. And a place to put something very dangerous.”

Leo thought about this for a moment.
A lot of power.
Ingrid had said that, too.

Dr. Flart started walking back and forth rapidly, his hands waving around as he talked to himself, working something out in his head.

“What’s he doing?” Remi asked.

“Did he say how long?” Dr. Flart interrupted. “How much time do I have?”

“He didn’t say exactly. But there’s another problem, too.”

Leo proceeded to tell Dr. Flart about the seven million dollars in back taxes, Ms. Sparks, all the bad news.

“That does complicate things,” Dr. Flart said. “We can’t lose the hotel — that would be a disaster. And there’s only one place you can find that much money in a hurry.”

“A bank?” Remi asked.

“Okay, there are two places.”

“Fort Knox?” Remi asked.

“Okay, three — but seven million that belongs to Merganzer D. Whippet — that kind of money can only be found if you go deeper.”

“Deeper,” Leo said. “Like where the gears are?”

“Yes, where the gears are. Only one person can run the gears, and I haven’t seen him in a very long time.”

“Who? Merganzer?” Remi was bursting with curiosity.

“Don’t worry about that now — we’ve got real work to do!”

And with that, Dr. Flart was down on his knees, tinkering with something near the floor.

“Clyde! Pronto!” he yelled.

Clyde leapt off the table in one bounce and landed at Dr. Flart’s side.

“Screwdriver!” Dr. Flart yelled.

Three jets of steam shot out of Clyde’s head and her right leg came up. Dr. Flart grabbed the leg, turned it, and yanked it off.

“That’s gotta hurt,” Remi said, but Clyde only beeped and whirled and steamed.

“She’s fine,” Blop said. “But you should know something.”

“Crowbar!” Dr. Flart yelled. He stuck the leg back on Clyde, turned her in a circle, and yanked it back off again. The end was a Phillips screwdriver.

“Does this look like a crowbar to you?” Dr. Flart scolded Clyde. Clyde beeped in a way that sounded nervous. The leg went back on.

“Crowbar!”

“What should we know?” Leo asked Blop. Dr. Flart was acting more like a mad scientist with every passing second, and Leo remembered Ingrid’s warning:
He’s . . . unpredictable.

“He’s opening it up,” Blop said.

“Opening what up?” Remi asked. Even he was starting to get nervous.

“The ant farm. He’s definitely opening the ant farm.”

Dr. Flart was leaning hard into Clyde’s crowbar leg, which was wedged into a crack in the glass. He was putting all his weight into it.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea, Dr. Flart?” Remi asked. “Maybe we should have a soda, think about this a little more, really weigh our options.”

“Stand back!” Dr. Flart said.

A small square of glass popped free and dirt trickled out onto the floor. Dr. Flart put his head into the opening. Remi and Leo could hear his voice echoing inside the ant farm.

“Yooooohoooooo. Anyone in there?”

A pile of dirt fell into his substantial head of white hair.

“He’s lost his marbles,” Blop said. “We’re in big trouble.”

“Nonsense,” Dr. Flart said, pulling his head out and shaking the dirt free like a wet dog just out of the bathtub. “All is as it should be. I’ll need a volunteer.”

Dr. Flart put Clyde’s leg back on and twisted it into place.

“No one?” he asked, standing at his full height and staring down at the boys.

Leo and Remi both backed up a few steps.

“Oh, come now,” he said, reaching under the table to a compartment Remi and Leo couldn’t see. “The ants aren’t
that
big.”

Leo tried to remember everything he’d ever learned about ants. He seemed to recall that they could lift twenty times their own body weight.

“How much do they weigh?” Leo asked, gulping as Dr. Flart opened the secret door under the table and dry ice steamed out.

“Each one weighs 46.938 pounds,” Blop said. “A rough estimate, mind you.”

Leo tried to do the math. Forty-seven times twenty.

Almost a thousand pounds.

Dr. Flart pulled out three bottles of Flart’s Fizz and set them on the table. He fished around in his pocket and pulled out golf tees, gum balls, and a bottle opener.

“There we are,” he said. “You’re all set.”

Remi was mesmerized by the Flart’s Fizz. He was head over heels for the stuff, and Dr. Flart could tell.

“It’s decided, then. Clyde will guide you through the
ant farm to retrieve the Floogers while I take Leo into the lab for some very important work.”

“Wait,” Remi said, looking at the faces all around him. “You mean
me
?”

“Did you know an ant the size of a human can run as fast as a racehorse?” Blop asked. He went on an ant-fact tirade that included way more information than Remi wanted to know.

“Not to worry, my boy!” Dr. Flart said, yelling over the top of Blop’s voice. “They have a mortal fear of loud noises. All you have to do is guzzle one of these if you see one coming toward you and they’ll run for cover.”

Dr. Flart picked up the bottles and set them into Remi’s red jacket pockets. He put the bottle opener, which was tied to a string, around Remi’s neck, slapped him hard on the shoulder, and bid him good-bye.

“Off with you! Clyde will show you the way. Oh — and don’t touch both ends of a Flooger at the same time.”

“Why not?” Remi asked nervously.

“You’ll act as a conductor if you do that.”

Dr. Flart looked at Remi, who was staring back blankly, as if he didn’t understand.

“There’s enough juice in one Flooger to light all of New York City for several days. You don’t want that kind of power going live between your fingers. Based on my calculations, you’d instantly turn to dust.”

“And we don’t want that,” Leo said.

“No, not that. That would be bad,” Remi mumbled. It was all too much for Remi to calculate — the ants, the Floogers, the Flart’s Fizz. He was in a nearly speechless daze.

Not so for Dr. Flart, who was full of energy and chatter, like there was a big, complicated experiment about to be done and he was in charge of all the details. He pushed Leo along, out into the laboratory, and Remi was left alone with Clyde and Blop in the dining room.

“He’s right, you know,” Blop said. “Merganzer designed it that way. Giant ants hate loud noises. The Fizz will protect you, I’m sure of it.”

Clyde was staring into the hole, making a mechanical barking sound.

“See there?” Blop said from his perch on Clyde’s back. “No ants. They don’t like loud noises, just like Dr. Flart said.”

Remi looked up the sides of the high glass walls. There were ants in there, lots of them, moving in the vast system of tunnels that ran overhead, underfoot, in every space of the wall. But it was true, none of the ants was anywhere near Clyde. They’d all moved away at the puny sound of her barking. Remi imagined what they’d do if he blasted a monster burp in their direction.

“But I don’t even know what a Flooger looks like or
where to find one,” Remi complained. He was starting to think he could go into the ant farm without completely melting down, but there was still the simple fact that he hadn’t a clue about what to do once he got in there.

Clyde began bursting steam and beeping instructions.

“She says she’ll show you where to go,” Blop said. “Just follow her lead.”

This made Remi feel better. He wasn’t going alone — Blop and Clyde would be with him. And he had three bottles of Flart’s Fizz! Things were looking up.

“She needs you to go in first,” Blop said.

Remi crouched low and got his first look inside the ant farm. The hole stopped short and turned in both directions, and Remi realized something he hadn’t before: Just like a small ant farm he might put in his room, this one was narrow. It was only a few feet deep, which meant the tunnels he had seen behind the glass were all the tunnels there were.

“Which way?” Remi asked. “Left or right?”

“Left,” Blop said, translating a short burst of beeps and steam-filled whistles.

Remi turned to the left and started crawling along the floor of the dirt tunnel. It was heading up at an angle of about ten o’clock on a watch. It was a long tunnel, about twenty feet, and there were no ants in sight.

“This isn’t so bad,” Remi said. He could look to his left and see through the clear glass into the big dining room, which comforted him until he saw Clyde bouncing up and down in the far corner.

“I thought you were coming in with me!” Remi yelled. He couldn’t hear Blop’s answer, and it appeared they couldn’t hear him, either. It was much harder trying to crawl backward, but he managed it, arriving at the bottom again to find another unfortunate surprise.

“Hey!” Remi yelled, hitting his fists on the glass. Clyde had moved the glass door back in place and sealed it shut (she was a clever robot dog, with advanced skills in biting things, holding on to them, and moving them). He could hear Blop’s voice, but only barely through the thick glass. Something about not wanting any of the ants to get out.

Remi heard a strange noise from the tunnel on the right, like something big and curious moving toward him.

“Left!” Blop yelled in his biggest robot voice, which could hardly be heard inside the ant farm. Remi crawled back up the left tunnel as fast as he could, outracing the awful sound of ants chasing him.

Clyde moved all the way to the far corner of the room and began bouncing higher and higher until Blop’s head nearly hit the glass ceiling.

“How did I get myself into this?” Remi asked himself. The tunnel switched back in the other direction
and Remi kept climbing, trying to reach the top corner where Clyde was leading him. Soon he had switched back again and found himself looking down twenty feet at the table in the dining room.

Clyde had moved over, bouncing off the table and up to a spot on the glass ceiling where a group of ants were gathered.

Crawling on the inside of the glass ceiling was one of the scariest things Remi had ever done. He could think of only one thing: that the glass would break under his weight and he would fall. And then there were the ants — at least one following him, and more in front, gathered in a wider section of tunnel before him.

“Flart, don’t fail me now,” he said, pulling out the first of three bottles and popping the cap off. He drank it down before it could begin fizzing into thin air. It tasted as amazing as he’d remembered it to be.

He dropped the empty bottle and braced himself for a colossal burp as the ant behind him moved very close and the ants in front of him began to take notice of his presence.

Unfortunately, it was a dud. Not even a regular burp, but a true runt that lasted under a second and made almost no noise at all.

The ants were moving in fast now, curious and angry at an intruder in their midst.

Remi fumbled with the second bottle, dropping the opener several times as his hands shook. He wished he could turn around and see how close the ant (or ants) was behind him, but he was too big for that. And the line of ants in front of him was closing in fast.