THE MAIN THING ABOUT the Mysterious Mole People is that they were normal humans once. They lived in regular daylight, in ordinary houses, and held down honest jobs like racing stock cars or selling famous-name sports equipment.
But they got fed up with the way things were, like how everybody keeps getting robbed at gunpoint and forests keep getting chopped down. Many years ago, the Mole People went underground. They developed thick, furry hides and powerful claws, and built a whole secret kingdom down under the earth. From there, to this day, they wage their revenge.
If a robbery happens to be going on at gunpoint overhead, all of a sudden the ground will shake and there will come a slurping sound.
In a flash, the robber will be gone, sucked down into the dark underworld of the Mole People.
It doesn’t matter if it’s in China or Afghanistan or Texas or New Jersey. The Mysterious Mole People don’t recognize national boundaries, and they never exchange prisoners. From underneath, every place looks the same to them. They have this whole system of tunnels that go everywhere in the world, under cities, mountains, oceans, even the polar ice caps. Wherever they want to go, they can get there fast.
For instance, if something bad is happening to the environment, a lot of trash being dumped in a river or forests getting made into parking lots, SLURP! the person or persons who are doing it will get sucked under.
If these persons have become rich and greedy from their profits, the Mysterious Mole People will see to it that their money is passed out to the poor. The Mole People are kind of like Robin Hood. They look out for the little guy that no one else thinks about. Except they can be absolutely merciless at times.
It was at one of these merciless moments, I told Oggie, that the Mysterious Mole People came up out of the blue, or rather out of the brown, and slurped Disney World.
The newspapers reported a terrible earthquake had done it, but Amory Ellington knew the real story just from one glance at the headlines.
Amory Ellington is the kid investigator who’s on the Mole People’s case. He has this turtle named Alphonse that he always talks to.
“Yo, Alphonse, look at that. The Mysterious Mole People have struck again,” he’ll say, or something like that. Alphonse never says anything back. Most of the time he looks asleep, but he’s one sharp reptile and knows what’s happening.
Amory Ellington has been collecting evidence about the Mysterious Mole People’s existence for years. The problem is, nobody except Alphonse believes him. Even Amory’s own mother thinks he’s making it up, and she’s basically a good person.
“Mole People! Oh, Amory, honey. Have you been taking your vitamins?” she asks him. She has a theory that vitamins are the answer to everything, like mothballs.
At last, Amory can’t stand it anymore. The news about Disney World is too terrible to ignore. It’s one thing to slurp a few robbers and parking lots, quite another to swallow a hundred-acre entertainment park. Who are these Mole People, anyway?
“Alphonse, buckle up and prepare for departure,” Amory tells the old turtle. “We’re going to Florida.” Ten minutes later, they’ve got their backpacks on and they sneak out through a side door.
This is the start of a lot of adventures they have on the road to Disney World. They go through kidnappings, shoot-outs, cement feet, and con men disguised as turtle-food salesmen. An old lady in Alaska tries to put them in an orphanage for not having any parents, but they escape by swimming the Black Sea.
After that, they build a raft and go all the way down the Amazon River to Florida. (Oggie wasn’t too hot on geography. I could take him pretty much anywhere I wanted without him asking a lot of questions.)
In Florida, Amory and Alphonse start snooping around what’s left of Disney World, which looks like a war zone: busted sidewalks, trash blowing everywhere. Then it happens: walking along a muddy street one afternoon, they get held up at gunpoint.
“Your money or your life, you reptiles!” the hold-up man yells.
They’re about to hand over their last dollar when the ground starts shaking. It opens with a terrible roar at their feet. There’s a flash of black fur, and the hold-up man is sucked under, screaming at the top of his lungs. The ground seals back over again, neat as can be. You can hardly see that anything happened.
Amory and Alphonse stand there with their eyes like hubcaps. They’re thankful for being saved but also awed out of their minds.
“Alphonse, who ARE these Mole People? How do they know when to strike? Are they good or are they bad? What is their GRAND PLAN?” Amory asks the old turtle when his breath comes back. “We’ve got to find out more about them!”
From that moment on, Amory and Alphonse’s one ambition in life is finding some way down into the Mysterious Mole People’s kingdom to uncover the truth about them. And pretty soon, guess what? They do.