CHAPTER 14

In which Bildorf and Pib use the direct approach, Cosmo Clutch proves he’s an excellent multitasker, and Leslie finds an uncommon carrot

Banzai!” cried Bildorf and Pib.

They had strapped swimming goggles over their eyes and tied tiny polka-dotted handkerchiefs over their faces. They looked like shaggy miniature Wild West banditos! The transformation wasn’t to disguise their identities, however. It was to protect them from their own stench. Both hobmongrels were too small to carry one of Elliot and Leslie’s anti-ghork devices, so they had gone for a more direct approach. Bildorf had rubbed himself in the extra-stinky cheese, while Pib had soaked her fur in onion juice. They both reeked unbearably, which was perfect when they scaled up the backs of the ghorks and smeared themselves across their hideous faces (which was quite effective).

Gügor, meanwhile, went berserk. He rounded up a small herd of ear-ghorks and crumpled them into an ear-flapping mass. When he was done with them, they looked like an enormous pitted green basketball (with gigantic ears).

“What have you done with Gügor’s 1TL?!” he hollered at them.

“Look at these ears,” one of them whined back at him. “We can hear you just fine! Quit shouting!”

“Also, what’s a 1TL?” cried another.

“Eloise-Yvette,” Gügor growled. “She’s Gügor’s One True Love!”

The massive green basketball trembled with laughter. “What a sap!”

Gobstoppers, fluffy cushions, onion slices, and clouds of cheesy stink soared in every direction, all to a soundtrack of excruciatingly off-key music.

“It’s working!” cried the professor. He waved a pair of polka-dot cushions over his head. “We’re doing it! We’re fighting back! We’re saving the day!”

For once, it seemed the professor was right. All across the lobby, the ghorks were taken by surprise, thanks to Elliot and Leslie’s ingenious weapons. Even though they were outnumbered ten to one, the creatures of DENKi-3000 were—astonishingly, miraculously—winning.

Cosmo Clutch lived up to his word when it came to saving the day. He had an Onion Stunner in both hands, an Ear-Stinger strapped across his chest, and a Fluffy Pillow Pitcher tied into his antlers. Even with all that extra equipment, he still flipped among the ghorks as nimbly as a gymnast.

Over near the elevators, armed with an Onion Stunner (Leslie) and a Funky Cheese Wafter (Elliot), the two children were able to hold back a pair of ghorks. They had cornered a nose-ghork and an eye-ghork, pinning them to the wall with the unspeakable bouquets of onions and Buffalo Butt Blue cheese.

“Tell us what you’ve done with the creatures who work here,” Leslie demanded.

“Where are you keeping Jean-Remy’s sister?” Elliot asked, closing in with his Funky Cheese Wafter.

“The same place we’re gonna keep you two,” replied the nose-ghork, trying in vain to plug his enormous nostrils.

“That’s right,” said the eye-ghork, his eyes squeezed tight. “We’ve turned this whole place into one great big dungeon—and we’ll have all of you down there soon enough!”

“Not as long as I’ve got one of these!” Elliot turned the fan on his Stinky Cheese Wafter to full power.

“It’s not going to stop,” Leslie added, “until you tell us what you’re up to!”

Unfortunately, Elliot’s stinky cheese weapon worked a little too well. With a scream of disgust, the ghorks slid along the wall and ran around the corner behind the elevators. Sensing victory, Elliot and Leslie chased after them, but when they turned the corner themselves, they hit a dead end.

“How did they do that?” asked Leslie.

Elliot lowered his Wafter. “There’s no way out.”

At the end of the hall, there was nothing but a three-dimensional mural featuring all kinds of food. It was a bit like the highway billboard that had welcomed them to Simmersville. Sculpted fruits and vegetables, meats and fish, grains and nuts, and loaves of bread popped off the wall in a kind of topographical map of dinnertime.

“Could they be hiding behind that sculpture?” Leslie asked.

They walked up to it, running their fingers over the surface, but it was perfectly solid. Then, suddenly, Leslie let out a yelp.

“Ew!” She leapt away from the wall, where she had just been examining a basket of artificial carrots and cucumbers. “That one there! It’s . . . warm!” She pointed to a carrot that was smaller than the rest. It didn’t extend as far as the others. She leaned in for a closer look and saw that what she had taken for a carrot was something else entirely.

“It’s a finger!”

“No,” said Elliot. “Not a finger. You found a knottub! It’s like the ones in the Creature Department. I’ll bet it’s for calling an expectavator.”

“There’s one way to find out.”

Leslie reached into the veggie basket and grabbed the disturbingly warm and lifelike digit (complete with a jagged fingernail and wiry hair on the back of its knuckle). When she pulled it, a hidden door hissed open beside the mural. Inside, they saw the colorful buttons of an expectavator.

“Hiya-hiya!” came a cheerful voice that seemed to twinkle as brightly as the buttons. “Welcome to Heppleworth Food Factory Expectavator Number One! My name is Sunny, and it is my sincerest hope to guide you through the hallowed hallways and secret crevasses of—well, well! What a pleasant and unexpected surprise! Such a treat to take a couple of youngsters for a ride! Where to, you two?”

Inside the expectavator was one of the oddest creatures they had ever seen. It looked like a bright orange hairball with hands and a face, which wore an expression of pure, wide-eyed happiness. Instead of two legs, the creature had only one. It spiraled in a circle to the floor of the expectavator like a coiled spring, upon which he was blithely bobbing up and down.

“You are coming in, aren’t you?”

Whatever it was, the creature inside the expectavator seemed harmless enough, but Elliot and Leslie couldn’t just leave their friends. They turned back toward the main lobby, but the moment they rounded the corner, they saw there was trouble. The creatures of DENKi-3000 had run out of ammunition. The hand-ghorks had fought so fiercely over the fluffy pillows, they had torn them to shreds. With nothing remaining to fight over, they could devote their enormous hands to destroying the other weapons. The creatures of DENKi-3000 had lost their advantage. Already, many of them had been captured, hoisted high in a tangle of nets.

Perhaps the saddest sight of all was Hercules, the incredible flying machine that had brought them here. Its monstrous mechanical body filled one half of the lobby, lying inert on the hard marble floor.

“Don’t worry about us,” the professor called to his nephew through the net in which he was trapped. “We’ll be okay! It’s up to you and Leslie now! Find Eloise-Yvette! And find out whatever it is these ghorks are up to!”

“Shut it, four-eyes,” said one of the ghorks guarding the professor’s net (it was an eye-ghork, of course, who would never be caught dead wearing spectacles). He thumped Elliot’s uncle on the back of his head, knocking the professor unconscious.

“Uncle Archie!” Elliot wanted to run to his uncle’s aid, but it was impossible. There were simply too many ghorks—and they were coming straight for them!

They turned and ran for the expectavator.

“Hiya-hiya!” Sunny bounced on his springy leg and rubbed his hands together. “I’m so glad you’re back! It’s going to be so exciting to take both of you on a ride in my very own expectavator! Now then, as I was just saying: Where to, you two?”

Leslie waved her arms at him. “Anywhere but here! Just shut the doors already!”

“Hurry!” Elliot told him. “The ghorks are coming!”

“Oh, I’m very sorry, but I can’t shut the doors until you give me a destination.”

“Eloise-Yvette,” said Leslie. “We’re looking for Eloise-Yvette Chevalier. Can you take us to her?”

“Oh, Eloise-Yvette! So lovely, isn’t she? But . . .” Sunny’s brow wrinkled in thought. “I’m afraid when Quazicom took over, Eloise-Yvette was laid off.”

“No,” said Elliot. “She wasn’t laid off. She was thrown in a dungeon!”

“Dungeon? Oh, well! Why didn’t you say so? That’s something else that changed when Quazicom took over. They installed a whole lot of new buttons in all the expectavators. See?” He pointed to a section of buttons behind them. They were all marked with the same word: Dungeon #1, Dungeon #2, Dungeon #3, all the way up to—well, there were too many to count. “Which one would you like?”

“Any of them!” Leslie cried. “We don’t care! Just press a button and close the door!”

“Oh, no, I could never do that!” said Sunny. “You’re my passengers. You have to decide.”

The first of the ghorks had rounded the corner, rushing down the hall toward the expectavator.

“We’ll start at the beginning,” said Elliot. “Dungeon Number One!”

Sunny clapped his hands. “Excellent choice!”

Leslie and Elliot backed away from the doors, watching in terror as a horde of eyes, ears, noses, mouths, and hands came glaring and flapping and snorting and growling and grabbing toward them.

The horrifying image vanished just in time, as the doors slid shut. After that, there was only the quiet hum of the expectavator, beginning its descent, down and down and down, to Dungeon Number One.