HOW TO SURVIVE A MUTANT ATTACK
About a half an hour later, the novelty of meeting Freddie and me had worn off with the kids. I came to the sudden realization the being King of Mutants wasn’t going to be easy…or fun. It was going to be a total nightmare, and possibly quite painful.
Lucky me. This was my destiny.
First, this gigantic headed kid with rubbery arms and legs came creeping up to me, his body movements, undulating and springy like Jell-O. Now his strange approach wasn’t the problem with Octopus Boy, which was what he was even though he didn’t have eight arms. My predicament occurred when he jumped up on me and wrapped his legs and arms around my body. I couldn’t get him off. While I struggled to release myself from his suction cup grip, I also found out that Dog Girl really does bite. She ripped right into my ankle and drew blood.
A Wolf Boy cornered Freddie in the back of the lab, growling, while Gorilla Boy and Grizzly Girl threw threatening gestures in his direction. Meanwhile, the rest of the mutant kids tore around the place like they’d just escaped an insane asylum.
Out of the entire crew, only one of the kids wasn’t acting like she needed an extra-large dose of Ritalin. I recognized her small hands as being the ones waving from the Kangaroo Girl’s pouch earlier. The tiniest, standing at about nineteen inches tall, she hid in a corner and flinched as if she was afraid she was going to be stepped on. Her butt glowed firefly orange and she had little gossamer wings.
With the exception of little Glow Girl, I feared for my life. These kids were freakishly strong and they showed no signs of slowing down. A Cheetah Girl ran around the room as fast she could, round and round and around again. A Monkey Girl swung off the lights.
It was like being hit by a rogue wave of chaos. There was nothing I could do. Octopus Boy was on me like a sticky, rubbery straight jacket.
An alarm went off, its blare so loud I thought my eardrums would burst. It sounded like one of those old air raid sirens that alerted the public to bomb attacks. Most of the mutant kids scurried into their pods as quick as they could.
“Get back in your pods now,” bellowed a harsh voice. “If not, you know what’s headed in your direction. Octo and Wolfy that means you.”
At first I thought Dr. Greizenheimer escaped his confinement, but then I recognized the deep voice. Richie had returned, and not a moment too soon.
One by one, Octo’s suction cups released themselves from my neck, my arms, and my body. His tentacle like arms nearly strangled me to death and I could barely breathe. The kid stood in front of me, glaring. I couldn’t believe his nerve. But what he did next left me flabbergasted. He hocked up a gigantic loogie and spit a black ink cloud right into my face. Then, he eyed me over his shoulder and bounced back to his pod.
I looked down at my forearms, finding the beginnings of raised, circular bruises the size of silver dollars. This kid and I were going to have some serious issues getting along.
“You’re lucky I didn’t spray you with my toxins,” he threatened before submerging himself up to his eyes in his water-filled pod.
“You’re lucky I didn’t bite your arm off,” I yelled. I knew I acted immature, but you know how it is. Sometimes you couldn’t control reactions. Hey, I’m only human.
Freddie rubbed his bleeding arm, his face twisted with pain. Wolfy had gotten him pretty good, too. I wondered why these kids lashed out at us when they seemed to have welcomed us before.
“Didn’t anybody tell you never to enter this room without protection?” asked Richie. It wasn’t a question. “These kids can’t be controlled. And there’s a group of them that are really bad.”
“I wish you’d told us that before you left,” I said, wheezing.
“Tony and me didn’t think you’d do something as crazy as this,” said Richie. “Figured you’d take a swim or do something fun.”
“Yeah, but I thought they were like me.”
“You’re normal compared to them. Greizenheimer messed them up in a major league kind of way.”
He was right. This room had bad vibes written all over it. Plus, the tingle in my tail told me some of them were going to be a lot more than trouble. Add to that, some of the mutants looked at me like I’d just murdered a kitten in front of them. And the ones that weren’t glaring at me trembled in their capsules, watchful of the angry pod kids.
Freddie turned toward Richie. “How’d it go with Ashby? Is he suspicious of anything?”
“He’s really mad at the doc. Said something about teaching him a lesson. But I don’t think he’ll be coming around for a while, taking a little vacation he said.”
“Good, don’t need him getting into our way,” said Freddie. He took off his t-shirt and wrapped it around his bloody arm. “Mav, I told you those kids were super mutant strong. Man, did that kid dig into me. Maybe we could start up some kind of rehabilitation program?”
“We’re going to have to do something,” I agreed, daring not look Freddie in the face. I’m sure he scowled at me or gave me one of his brainiac-told-you-so-smirks. His hunch about avoiding this room at all costs was dead on. But he brought up a good point.
What kind of program could we create for these kids? Sending them to a middle school in New York City was not an option. I sighed with uncertainty. “This is just so completely messed up. I don’t know where to start. Speaking of which, what are we going to do about the Octopus Lady? She’s not breathing…at all.”
Nobody uttered a word, but Richie understood right away. His large shoulders began to quiver. Then he crouched down and balanced his weight on his big square knees, sobbing. Freddie put his hand on the big guy’s back. “Richie, she’s in heaven now. Her pain is gone.”
Richie nodded with big tears streaming down his face.
“I don’t mean to be insensitive, but did you know her real name?” Freddie asked.
“Maybe we can drop her body off at her house?” I suggested.
“So that her real family can give her the proper respect she deserves,” said Freddie.
Richie puffed out his barrel-sized chest and looked proud, like he couldn’t believe he was about to offer a clever solution. He wiped some drool from the corner of his mouth. “It could be in the room where Greizenheimer kept records of all his experiments.”
“I want to go there right now,” said Freddie. “In addition to Octo-Mom, I want to know what that maniac did to my mom.”
Me too, I thought, even though I was nervous as to what we would find.
Richie nodded and we followed him toward the elevator. We got off at the viewing station, walked down the hall, and through the lab—where we found Tony sitting in front of psycho-doc’s confinement. Greizenheimer scowled at us through the bars.
“I got the pin number for the ATM,” said Tony with a child-like laugh.
“Did you blast him?” Freddie and I asked in unison.
“Oh, you imbeciles, he wouldn’t dare. I gave the lug the number,” said Greizenheimer. “Doesn’t matter one way or another. Money matters are the least of my concerns. Now that you’ve compromised my work, we’re all dead.”
Freddie ignored the doctor and turned to Tony. “What’s the pin?”
Tony straightened up proudly. “0718.”
“Hey, that’s tomorrow,” said Freddie.
I was stunned. “It’s also my birthday…”
Greizenheimer’s eyes narrowed to a nasty glare that made me shiver. “Don’t think I was being sentimental, Maverick. It was just an easy date to remember. And do you really think anyone cares about a mutant’s birthday?”
“I do,” said Freddie.
“It won’t matter, Freddie. Don’t you see?” said Greizenheimer. “Once you cut off a monster’s head, another even more powerful one grows back. You have absolutely no comprehension as to who you are really messing with.”
Yeah, I do, a bunch of psychotic jerks, I thought.
Richie glared at Greizenheimer. “Ashby wanted us to deliver you a little message. He said he was so ticked off, he told his parent’s how you treated him today. He said that they were going to call a board meeting when they get back in town in a month.”
“Just as I told you. The board’s power is far-reaching and they control everything. Every oil field. Every major corporation. Everything. The Vanderholt family and I are just pawns in their wickedly fun games of war.”
“Whose power? What war? Who in the world are you talking about?” I screamed.
“Let me out of this confinement and we’ll have a heart-to-heart discussion. I’ll tell you everything you want to know, Son.”
“Never,” I spat, “and don’t you ever call me son again.”
“Have it your way, Maverick.”
Picking up on my anger, Snaggletooth growled at the lunatic. Then, like usual, he cowered in between my legs.
“You’re just toying with our heads.” Freddie kicked Greizenheimer’s cage, almost colliding his big foot into the doctor’s face. “Your sick and twisted mind games will not work on us!”
“Am I? Take a look around you, Freddie.”
Greizenheimer cackled in such a sinister manner, he turned my blood to ice. And his bad attitude really pushed Freddie’s buttons the wrong way. My half-brother’s entire body trembled and his face turned bright crimson. There was no holding him back. Freddie went insane on the cage, pulling it and kicking it like a spastic mixed martial arts fighter. Chimchee backed into a corner, but the doctor just sat on the floor and smoothed out his hair, snickering. Tony, Richie, and I had to drag Freddie away, kicking and screaming.
Greizenheimer’s wicked laughter taunted us with every step.
“Freddie, you’ve got to keep a cool head,” I said.
“I hate that man,” he huffed. “I think we should fry his brain like he tried to do to me.”
“That’s not a bad idea, but we’ve got enough messed up forces working against us. Including that little matter of leaving a dead lady rotting in a room with a bunch of kids, messed up and dangerous as they are.”
“I guess I have some anger management issues, huh?” Freddie calmed down immediately. “I’m going to have to try and work on that. Anger? It’s new for me.”
“Not me,” I said. “Boy, what I wouldn’t do to have a go at Ashby.”
“Ashby isn’t that bad,” said Freddie. “He’s just a little misguided—”
“What are you talking about? Have you not been with us this whole time?”
“I just don’t think Ashby is as horrible as you think he is,” said Freddie with a gulp.
“Freddie, you were with him the night Greizenheimer killed your mother. He had something to do with her death.” I glared at my brother. “Have you been taking crazy pills?”
Richie and Tony stood dumbfounded. I could tell they wanted to say something, but didn’t.
“No, I’m just sure we don’t have the whole story,” Freddie huffed.
“Whatever, and enough about Ashby. He’s, like, the least of our worries now,” I said, trying to snuff out what could have become a full-on—maybe even a pull punches—argument. “Right now, we’ve got to deal with that Octopus Lady.”
The reality of my statement seemed to snap everybody back into shape. Freddie and I stopped glaring at one another, and in a daze, we followed Richie and Tony down a long flight of stairs to the basement.
Thousands of files, arranged alphabetically, filled the stainless steel filing cabinets on the walls. I tackled the G-R’s, Freddie scoured the A-F’s, and Richie and Tony combed through the rest. We were holed up in the records room for hours.
Richie was the one who finally located the true identity of the Octopus Lady. He handed me the file, a tear cascading down his tattooed cheek.
“She was a nice woman,” he said.
Her name was Elana and she was twenty-seven years old when she died. According to her file, she was from Hoboken, New Jersey. A picture of her in a fancy ball gown—dated from six years ago with Dr. Greizenheimer by her side—fell from her folder. I picked it up. Just as I’d presumed, she had once been very pretty. Frozen in time, she looked up toward the psycho’s face with love and admiration.
If only she knew then what we knew now.
Richie and Tony said that they knew a friend-of a friend-of-a-friend who would take care of getting her body back to her family, no questions asked. Rather than arguing with their methods or tactics, I sent them on their way. See, I had my own case study in my hands. And I had a feeling it would hold the answers to the other questions I’d had.
I took a deep breath, my hands shaky, and I flipped the folder open. In tears, my whole body shook when I first saw her picture, Celeste Mercury. She was beautiful, as glamorous as a movie star. She had jet-black hair, bright green eyes, and a warm smile. My head spun with a flurry of emotions.
I had proof.
I had a mom.
I was human.
I cried hard, something I hadn’t done since the age of four. I cried because I’d never met her. I cried because my life shouldn’t have turned out the way it did. I cried because I really needed a good cry, to let all those emotions out I’d kept bottled up. But mostly, I cried and prayed for her. Just like Dr. Greizenheimer said, she’d died from complications from childbirth, delivering me at the very young age of twenty-one. My heart stuttered when I gazed at her photograph. I wonder what she saw in Doctor Greizenheimer? Why she chose to have a child with him?
If I’d never been born, she’d still be here.
Freddie walked up behind me and read over my shoulder. “Things like that happen all the time, Maverick. People die every day from complications and it just makes it more complicated,” said Freddie with his new state of calm. “At least our freak dad didn’t try turning your mom into the original Octo-Mom.”
“He did that…that…to your mom?” I answered. Never one to wallow in self-pity, I wiped the tears off my face with the sleeve of my shirt.
“Yeah, dude, he tried to do that the night I was at Ashby’s,” said Freddie, his face filled with sadness. “What happened to our mothers? What happened to you? It’s not our fault. That freak would have found a way to ruin all of our lives for his personal gain.”
The way Freddie explained it made all the sense in the world, but I still didn’t feel any better. It was bad enough feeling guilty about my mother, but even worse, the discovery of hundreds of children’s files with the word DECEASED on them really stabbed at my heart. Me, I had it good compared to them.
In my head, I came up with ways to try and get Greizenheimer back, some kind of plan to exact my revenge—mostly maiming him. In that moment, I vowed to myself I was going to fight against the injustices of the world one bad man and one issue at a time. After all, it doesn’t take super-mutant powers to become a superhero.
“Let’s fry the wacko Doc’s brain!” I yelled.
Freddie stared me down, shaking his head and puffing out his bottom lip. “If we turn him into a human vegetable, don’t you think that would make you and I as bad as him? Do you really want to deal with that guilt?”
I went silent for a moment, my emotions on total overload.
“No, I guess not. And I think living in a cage is punishment enough. Trust me. It sucks.” I paused, my mouth twisting in thought. “Treating Greizenheimer like a caged beast, like the ones he experimented on, would probably be the biggest blow we could inflict on him. Obviously, the man’s an egomaniac. Let him see what it feels like for once.”
“Yeah, I agree. Cages totally suck. Been there, done that.”
Did I hear Freddie right?
“What? Your foster family kept you in a cage?”
“Yep, another reason of many of why I had to run away—”
“To Grumbling’s of all places.”
Freddie’s eyes lowered with sadness. “Yeah. To Grumbling’s.”
I tucked the photo of my mother into my pocket and threw the rest of my file into the air. Pages scattered on the ground. “I don’t think I can take too much more today. I’m kind of having trouble thinking straight. Now that Richie and Tony have taken the Octo-Mom away, what the heck are we going to feed those kids? They were feeding off her. They’re going to have, like, major withdrawals or something.”
Freddie laughed. “Let’s just hope they like fast food and pizza.”
I nodded, but we still had another problem. “And what about Greizenheimer? Shouldn’t someone keep an eye on him?”
“Upstairs, all over his apartment, are huge flat screens that also act as security monitors,” explained Freddie. “We can tune every channel onto Freak TV. We can watch both Greizenheimer and the pod kids at the same time.”
“Then let’s get out of this nauseating room of tragedy,” I said.
Honestly, I was kind of excited to explore my new digs. Bad experience aside, I now had a place to call home. After a knuckle bump, Freddie and I stepped out of the records room and into the elevator.
Everything in Greizenheimer’s living quarters was white except for the floors, appliances, and fittings, which were stainless steel. The only color giving life to the place came from the modern art that adorned the walls or the food in the refrigerator. He had horrible taste in paintings. To me, it just looked someone threw up onto the canvases. He didn’t have any plants and it was basically a sterile extension of his laboratory. We all took turns exploring our massive accommodations, watching the monitors, and tried to make the best of our predicament.
When it was my turn to tune into Freak TV, I didn’t notice anything shady going on with Greizenheimer. He just sat in his cage singing his opera music to Chimchee. But on the other camera, ten or so of the mutant kids, including Wolfy and Octo, were having a little pow-wow in the corner. It all seemed innocent enough until Octo grinned toward the camera with his vicious, lopsided smile and spat a wad of black ink at it. Ooze dripped down the monitor like blood splatter in an old horror film. It felt like a death threat.
I turned my back from the screen just as Richie and Tony returned with Mickey D’s for everyone. Relieved I didn’t have to figure out a way to feed them chemicals from a human body, I watched the mutant kids devour every last bite. I didn’t eat a thing, not a morsel. Thoroughly exhausted and completely stressed out, I passed out on a sun lounger on the roof deck with Snaggletooth at my side. I didn’t wake up until the next day.