This is what I wrote on Tuesday. It's an added chapter to connect a previously existing hole in my overall storyline, and to introduce the reach of The Order and Gordo's Organization (I'm SO thinking he's going to have to have his own book soon.) I'm still revising, but this is it's raw form.
Chapter
Fifteen
In
Which Our Hero Witnesses The Egg-pocalypse
Batman, Ninja-Girl, The Godfather,
and the Grim Reaper are going door-to-door demanding candy. Sounds like the start of a really epic joke,
doesn’t it?
Nope. No joke, just regular old
trick-or-treating. There are actually
six of us total, and I know who Batman and the gypsy fortune-teller are, but I
don’t know the lumberjack kid or Grim Reaper.
Lumberjack Kid seems younger than Gordo’s crowd, and Gordo introduces
him just as “Davy”, and states that he, like the others, is one of his
“captains.” I have no idea what he’s
talking about, but whatever. Let’s get
our candy on.
Grim Reaper kid is apparently Davy’s older
brother, but hasn’t spoken a word or removed his mask for even a moment, so I
have no idea how old he is or if I even know the kid. He may not know me either with my ninja mask
on, especially since Gordo introduced me as his “older friend, Ninja-Girl”.
Whoever he was, he seemed perfectly content
to walk up and down the night-darkened streets of Bloomington, Illinois on
Halloween night with a bunch of other kids and not say a word, despite my best
efforts to have a conversation with the kid.
We’d been up and down our street,
Whitetail Drive, and were now making our way onto Fawn Court. We were making out like bandits with the
candy. My grocery bag was almost a
quarter full already. The four younger
kids are deep in quiet conversation about something, when from across the
street, a mini Spiderman scurries up to Gordo and his pals.
Rico Gridley (Batman), holds the kid
from getting too close, but Gordo puts his hand on Rico’s arm to let him know
it’s alright for the kid to come closer.
“Sir!” the breathless kid gasps in a
piping voice. “Sir, they’re egging!”
Sir? Gordo nods sagely.
“We expected this. Who are they? Where?” asks my brother, who is apparently
“Sir” to some little kid now.
“Teenagers, Sir. Over on Bedford
Street. Down by the playground. They’re getting cars, houses, kids, too!
Anyone under four feet is in danger, Sir! It’s an awful mess! A real
massa-massa- mascara, Sir!”
“Anybody hurt, Spidey?” questions
Rico.
“Not that I can tell, but there’s a
whole lot of eggs and cryin’ going on, so I can’t be sure. Looks like they’re
headed this way.” Wee Spidey, message
delivered, catches his breath and waits for instructions.
What is going on here? Why has this
kid come to Gordo? Why is he calling him “sir”? And what does he expect us to
do about high-schoolers who are egging?
“Okay, here’s what we’ll do.” Gordo lays
out the plan for us.
“Spidey, grab the fourth-grade group
that should be on Weber Court. You know where that is?” Spidey nods.
“Good. Tell them to take their
emergency stash of eggs and see if they can draw the eggers into the teacher’s
parking lot at the elementary school.
We’ll have some people waiting there with cameras to catch the action.
Tell them to make sure they wear full masks, okay?”
Spidey salutes sharply and is off
like a shot, darting in and out of bushes and through backyards towards Weber
Court. Meanwhile, Gabby Anderson has
taken out a cell phone and is speaking quietly into it. She covers the mouthpiece with her hand and
reports to Gordo.
“I just heard from the fifth-grade
girls that there are eight high-schoolers and a few middle-schoolers involved
with the eggs. They’re split between
three cars. That’s too many for just Spidey’s group. What do you want me to
tell her?”
Gordo shoots a look at mini lumberjack
Davy and Davy’s older brother, Grim.
“Do you think this is something the
Order would want to get involved in?” He is addressing the Grim Reaper directly
now, who is standing right next to me.
The Grim Reaper nods, and my brother’s face takes on a satisfied glow.
“Terrific! We’ll give these bullies
a night they’ll never forget! Tell them to get on their bikes and meet us at
the elementary school parking lot, give us a few minutes to set up the sting, and then bring the cops. Make it a dogfight, and get them corralled for
us, okay?” Gordo’s eyes shine with
excitement; he’s in his element.
Grim holds his right hand out, cupped in that
“O” gesture that has begun appearing in my life the last few days, and runs off
with Davy in tow.
Wait! What?
Was “O” for the Order? What Order?
I don’t even have a chance to ask because Gordo is already issuing
instructions to the others in his best captain of the ship imitation.
Gabby puts her hand kindly on Rico’s shoulder
and tells him quietly, “Rico, sounds like your sister Madison is with one of
the groups.”
Rico frowns grimly and turns back to Gordo.
“I need to be a part of the bait team, Gordo.”
“We’ve got enough sixth grade boys to cover it,
Rico, you don’t have to-“
“I need to, man.
She needs a wake-up call.” Gordo
considers for just a moment, then claps Rico on the shoulder and nods
once.
Bait team? It sounds like they’re going off to
war!
“Gabby, you tell the girls to run straight to
the parking lot on the North side, just around the corner from where Spidey’s
group will be coming in. Tell them to
have the camera-phones ready and wait in the shadows until they see The Order
bug out. Tell them that I said, “No
heroes!” Just get the photos and hide or run.
We’ll have Rico take a group of sixth graders and bait the trap.
Everybody report in when you’re out safe.
Got it?”
Everyone nods their heads and darts in all
directions to get to work as I stand there like a doofus, my mouth agape in
shock.
My little brother, the boy who not that long ago
would climb into my bed during thunderstorms, just master-minded a precision,
practically military ambush on a bunch of high-schoolers with nothing more than
a cell-phone and a bunch of little kids!
What? How? Does Mom know about this? Who is this Order? Is he a part of
it?
Now, as he chomps down on a Snickers, he peers
curiously at my candy bag and inquires, “Do you have any Whoppers? I know you hate them, and I can get at least
three Jolly Ranchers for each package in trade.”
“GORDO! What was THAT?!?”
“That, my dear sister, is called organization.”
“No, that’s called a freakin’ SWAT Team
action!!!”
“A SWAT Team, huh? I’ll have to tell my people you said that.”
“What is the Order?”
“I can’t tell you about that.”
“Why the heck not? I just watched you put together an ambush
worthy of an army general, and you can’t even tell me what the Order is?”
“Look, Joey.
I’m sorry, but it’s not my secret to tell. I made a promise that I
wouldn’t peep a word of what I know.”
“But I’m your sister!!”
“Yes, but how are they gonna trust me and work
with my organization if I can’t even keep a secret?” He holds out his hands in
appeal, pleading with me to understand.
“Okay, then, explain to me about YOUR
organization. I thought you were just
running casino games at school? What’s
all this cloak and dagger, Mission Impossible stuff?” I cross my arms across my
chest and tap my foot in frustration. He
is SO going to get it if Mom ever finds about any of this.
“I’ll do you one better. Want to see my people in action? Maybe you’ll get to see the Order there,
too.” He waggles his eyebrows and grins
at me.
Sigh.
Well, if I hope to get anything out General Gord-father here, short of a
crowbar, I’d better go take a look.
Plus, I can’t miss this opportunity to maybe figure out who or what the
heck The Order is. I uncross my arms and
wave the way for him to lead on.
Immediately, he takes off at a jog towards the elementary school.
We’re about a block away when a silver clunker
of a car squeals up alongside us, and Gordo and I have to duck when an older kid
with a skeleton mask on leans out the passenger side window and wings two eggs at
us in quick succession. His aim is bad,
but as I come out of my crouch and began running towards the school, I spot two
wide-eyed faces I recognize, staring back at me through the rear window of the
speeding clunker.
Both Madison and Kristen have an “ohmigod!” look
on their faces. Kristen winces when she
sees my face, but Madison ducks her head like a true culprit would when
caught.
“C’mon, Joey! We’ve got them and the fireworks
are about to start! Hurry up!” Gordo
takes off again, following the silver car as it coughs towards the yelling and
egg-bombing coming from the school parking lot.
But it isn’t just a one-sided fight anymore. Nope, it looks more like a covered wagon
train being attacked by a tribe of really angry Native Americans.
Gordo and I arrive at the edge of the parking
lot just in time to watch as the silver car joins the pandemonium. There are two other cars, one a convertible
black sedan and the other a skeezy-looking, rusted-out old blue minivan. They’re looping the parking lot slowly, windows
and, in the van’s case, doors open to fling massive amounts of chicken embryos
at the three kids on bicycles whizzing in between the cars with what look like…yes,
somehow they have obtained…egg guns.
This must be The Order!
They are all wearing the same grim reaper
costume that Davy’s older brother had been wearing, circling and dodging like a
band of angry hawks. I see a massive
grim-reaper who must be a high-schooler whiz between the increasingly
egg-covered cars, pump his neon green plastic shotgun, take two eggs out of the
basket on the front of his bike and load his gun. With deadly accuracy, he sends the two
quickly fragmenting egg-grenades into the back window of the silver car,
splattering Madison and Kristen who scream like they are being murdered.
Not even a second later, someone roughly the
size, shape, and sneaker identity of Davy’s older brother sends another two eggs
ripping through the opposite window, and now both girls are sputtering, yellow,
and slimy.
I see Kristen scream at the driver of the car to
stop, and he yells back at her to shut up.
The grim reapers scatter on their bicycles, taking all the evidence of
their passing with them…except the eggy mess.
They zip off through the playground and disappear into the darkness of
the neighborhood beyond.
Before any of the cars can start to head out on
the chase, I see four kids who must be part of my brother’s group dart to the
center of the circling cars, including Rico Gridley. Three of them have camera phones, and one is
carrying a hand-held video camera. They
form a square, back to back, in the center and hold up their cameras at the
ready. What are they doing? They’re sitting ducks! The Order had them on the run and now these
kids were about to get creamed!
“Look out you guys!” I yell! Gordo places a hand on my arm and holds me
back from going to them.
“Just watch, Joey. They’ve got this. This is all
part of the plan.” Gordo says quietly.
The teenagers in the cars beep their horns and begin to circle tightly,
laughing now that they sense the coming slaughter.
“Start shooting!” pipes Rico’s high-pitched
voice.
“Start throwing!” guffaws the pug-faced
red-haired teenager driving the minivan.
It’s awful.
The four kids in the middle point their cameras, close their eyes and
lean back against each other as they are pegged from every direction with
dozens of eggs. I gasp at the
horror. Egg after egg. Volley after volley. You can barely see their features and
costumes under the slimy mess.
“Maddie! No!” I hear Rico
yell, just as his older sister pegs him in the face with a three-egged pitch
that would have made any major-leaguer proud.
The Evil Glamour Queen took out her own brother. Fratricide. That’s cold. Even she puts her hand over her mouth,
shocked at the results of her own throw.
Outside the tight circle of cars, from the
shadows surrounding the well-lit parking lot, creep small bands of little girls
holding cell phones out in front of themselves. They don’t get too close, but
there are at least twenty of them, and they begin to take massive amounts of
pictures of the teenagers shooting fish in a barrel.
All of a sudden, a much smaller grim reaper on a
pink, sparkly mountain bike about twice her (?) size zips into the drive behind
us and yells in a sweet, piping voice.
“GO! GO! GO!”
She wasn’t with the original three Grim Bikers,
and as soon as they hear her all the bunches of girls melt back into the
shadows or take off running, leaving just the teenagers, the victims of
Egg-pocalypse, and me and Gordo. She
follows the path of the rest of the Grim Bikers, escaping through the
playground. Gordo grabs my arm and tugs me behind some shadowy bushes next to
the corner of the school building.
In just a moment, it’s clear why. A mere five seconds after the last Grim Biker
from the Order took off, the cops arrive and catch three vehicles full of
teenagers, plus two very sorry middle-school girls red-handed egging little
kids. It was beautiful.
We don’t stay to see what happens next, but what
happens to those kids isn’t as important to me as figuring out the mystery of
Gordo’s Organization and The Order.
All the way home, I begged him to tell me who,
what, and why?
“Can’t tell you,” he’d apologize. “It’s better
if you don’t know.”
And that’s all he would say.
I pleaded. He shrugged.
I threatened.
He smiled and shook his head.
I told him I’d tell Mom and Dad about his
gambling operation at school, and he just rolled his eyes and reminded me that
he had me over a barrel with the homework note thing. We have a deal, and my silence is part of the
price I now owe him.
I gave him the silent treatment. He just hugged
me and herded us in the direction of home. So, The phone calls came in from the other
groups that the deed was done. Four
arrested, and all eight others had their picture taken for blackmail purposes
later.
I have to face it. My little brother really is
the head of some sort of kid-based organized crime syndicate.
When did the world go so crazy?
