“Stop! Halt!” somebody yelled in English.
The arms in the hay paid no attention.
“I said, Stop!” the voice repeated.
Now the arms slowed down for a second.
Drgnan and Jasper, struggling faintly, both hung with their shoes dabbling in the gutter. Their heads rolled on their shoulders.
Bvletch was already gone, disappeared into the fodder.
The new speaker was a boy, perhaps about fifteen—older than Lily and Katie. He had a stern, commanding face and excellent hair for stunts. Instead of a weapon, he held in front of him a Megaluxe Game Wedge™.
“Taylor Quizmo, Secret Agent!” the boy announced. Then he waved the Game Wedge™ and ordered, “Stop where you are!”
A guy leaned from the passenger-side window and pointed out, “That is a video game. A child’s toy. Not a weapon.”
“Think again, friend,” said Taylor Quizmo, Secret Agent. “Taylor Quizmo doesn’t play games.” He pressed a hidden button, and a spray of green sleeping gas poured out of the pointy part of the Wedge.
“Back! Back!” voices in the hay shouted to the driver. The driver hit the clutch and jolted the truck into reverse.
Lily and Katie threw themselves against the wall so they wouldn’t get squooshed. “Grab them!” Lily shouted, which doesn’t make much sense when I write it, but did make sense when she shouted it—because the half-conscious Drgnan and Jasper were sliding by. The arms in the hay had gotten a taste of their own sleeping medicine—they drooped—and it wasn’t hard for Katie and Lily to start a little tug-of-war with their friends as ropes.
Meanwhile, Taylor Quizmo, Secret Agent, was running toward the truck, spraying his aerosol sleeping gas and looking stern.
“Bvletch!” Lily yelled to him, and Katie joined her: “They’ve still got Bvletch!”
“Who’s . . . ?” Taylor Quizmo asked.
“A friend! In the hay!” Lily yelled.
Taylor Quizmo looked around, a little confused. He had just run into his own cloud of sleeping gas.
The truck kept rolling.
Lily and Katie held on to their friends for dear life.
Drgnan and Jasper collapsed like sacks into the girls’ arms.
The truck—with Bvletch still somewhere in it—screeched backward as the street got wider. It turned around and tore off.
Katie was leaning over Drgnan, slapping him. Jasper was blinking and sitting up. Taylor Quizmo was struggling to keep awake.
Everyone else was busy. So Lily ran after the truck.
It pulled out into a main street. It started honking wildly. It didn’t move. Half-gutted lumps of hay rolled off into the street. A struggle of spy arms and legs was visible in the mound of feed.
Lily realized why it wasn’t moving: The driver had fallen asleep. His head was bobbing on the horn.
That might buy us time, she thought, puffing toward the cab of the truck. She hoped she could pull Bvletch out of the mess.
The driver had fallen asleep—but the spy in the passenger seat had not. He pressed the driver’s leg down. The leg pressed the foot. The foot pressed the pedal. And the pedal set the whole mechanism of internal combustion rolling.
The truck sped off, swerving, up the hill toward the Castle on its forbidding peak. It took off with Bvletch still inside.
The alley behind it was left strewn with dazed bodies.