Here Comes Mr. Trouble

12

Uncle Carl lifted something that looked like a cross between a football helmet and a strainer out of the case. There were several wires trailing from it, and the surface was covered with electronic components and tiny readouts.

As he carried it toward his brother, he glanced at a dial on its side. “It’s set to level seven. What do you think?”

“Sounds low to me,” Uncle Colin said.

“I agree. Eight, then?”

“Let’s make it nine.”

Uncle Carl touched something on the side of the scanner then handed it to Uncle Colin, who immediately raised it into the air above Eric. “If you’ll just hold still for a moment.”

A part of Eric wanted to refuse to cooperate, but if they could learn something that would help bring his mother home, then it was worth it. “I’m ready,” he said.

Uncle Colin slipped the helmet-like contraption onto Eric’s head and gave it a nice downward shove.

“Hey!” Eric said.

“Just need to make sure it’s on tight.”

“It’s definitely tight.”

Uncle Carl grabbed the loose wires and began plugging them into an input strip on the front of the workbench.

Uncle Colin, meanwhile, pulled a monitor down to eye level and ran a cable from the back of it to a rectangular device on the wall. He then turned both of them on.

“What’s all this for?” Maggie asked.

Uncle Colin turned quickly and looked around, trying to indentify who had spoken. When his eyes settled on Maggie, he said, “Ah, yes, the friend. Don’t worry. Your boyfriend will be fine.”

“Whoa,” both Maggie and Eric said at the same time.

“I’m not her boyfriend,” Eric said.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Maggie said.

“Okay. Friend of Eric, then,” Uncle Colin said. He flashed his teeth in another phony smile. “And please don’t wander off. You’ll be next.”

“Me?” Maggie said. “I am so not doing that!”

Uncle Colin looked confused by her refusal. “But you have to. You’ve been hanging out with your…friend here, have you not? It is possible, though unlikely, that some of his…” he paused for a moment, “…troubles have rubbed off on you.”

“You mean the Makers could be after her, too,” Eric said. He felt angry with himself for putting his friend in that kind of danger.

Uncle Colin’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “You know about the Makers?”

“A little.”

Uncle Colin was silent for a moment, then said, “As I’ve already mentioned, it’s highly unlikely she’s been affected, but it’s always best to check.”

“Set!” Uncle Carl yelled out.

Uncle Colin moved his hands over the helmet for a few seconds then said, “Set.”

“Should we stand back?” Maggie asked.

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Uncle Colin said. “It’s completely harmless.”

Keira raised an eyebrow and took a step backward anyway. Seeing this, Maggie did the same.

“Do you feel anything unusual?” Uncle Colin asked Eric.

“You mean other than my head being crushed by your stupid helmet?”

“It’s not a helmet. It’s a scanner.”

Eric rolled his eyes. “I’m fine. Should I be feeling something?”

“Of course not. We haven’t turned it on yet.”

“Then why did you ask—”

“Switching on now,” Uncle Carl announced.

Eric’s eyes moved nervously from side to side as he braced himself for whatever was about to happen. He tried to catch Maggie’s attention but she was avoiding his gaze.

The helmet began humming lightly then started to vibrate. Surprisingly, it wasn’t uncomfortable. In fact, it was just the opposite, like someone was massaging his scalp. He kind of liked it.

Suddenly something started going clack, clack, clack like a piece of paper caught in the spokes of a bicycle. Eric flinched.

“Please,” Uncle Carl said. “Hold still.”

Though the clacking noise continued, it did nothing to change the feel of the helmet — sorry, scanner — on his head. So Eric started to relax again.

“Are you getting anything?” Uncle Colin asked.

“Coming through now,” Uncle Carl replied.

Eric moved his eyes, trying to see what was going on, but Uncle Carl was too far to his right and all he could see was the man’s back.

“Thirty more seconds,” Uncle Carl said.

“Are you all right, Eric?” Uncle Colin asked.

“I guess so,” Eric said.

“Excellent. Excellent. Thirty seconds and we’ll be done.”

Eric tried to count down the seconds in his head, but all of a sudden he was having a hard time concentrating and kept having to start over. Then he couldn’t remember why he was counting in the first place. In fact, he couldn’t remember why he was sitting on this stool, or was even in this weird-looking room. And who were these strange people staring at him?

Where are you? A voice that wasn’t a voice said. It was pleasant, almost like a song. Eric Morrison, where are you?

“Right here,” he mumbled.

He waited for the voice to say something more. It was a nice voice, pleasant, like a massage for his ears to go with the one his scalp was getting.

Sleep, it finally said.

Yes. Sleep. That’s what he needed. Sleep. Just because it was the middle of the day didn’t mean he couldn’t take a nap. Naps were awesome. So what if he hadn’t taken one since he was five? Naps were perhaps the best things ever invented.

Sleep. I just want to—

Why was everything shaking all of a sudden? How was he supposed to sleep when it felt like he was in the middle of an earthquake? He just needed a nap. It didn’t have to be for long, just a little while. If the world would just cooperate, he could be in dreamland. He liked dreamland. Dreamland was where—

“Hurry! Hurry!”

The voice was far away, barely loud enough for him to hear. But he didn’t want to hear it even a little bit. He just wanted to sleep.

But both the talking and the shaking continued.

Somebody please stop the shaking!

“I think he said something.” This voice was closer and different from the first. “Eric, can you hear me?”

“Stop the shaking,” he mumbled.

“Don’t worry about him,” the first voice said, not so distant now. “Someone get the back door.”

Eric wondered why these people couldn’t leave him alone. He just needed to sleep and everything would be all right. Everything would be just fine.

There was a thud, then someone said, “Oomph,” and someone else said, “Sorry.”

“You’re going to have to hold him on your laps,” the first voice said.

Eric could feel his head move lower than his feet, then he was jostled around for several seconds, and finally seemed to be level again.

From somewhere not too far away — everything seemed to be getting closer now — came a loud roar. It was followed by a second roar, and a third, and a fourth, each adding to the other until it was one giant thunderous rumble.

“Shut the doors! Shut the doors!”

Metal slammed against metal. Car doors, or at least Eric was pretty sure they were car doors. Then there was another roar, but this one was nowhere near as loud as the others. This one sounded like…a car engine?

He felt motion again.

“I think we’ve gone beyond an MA813,” a fourth voice said. This one was older, with an accent, a man’s voice. Familiar. Actually, all the voices were familiar. All but the beautiful one that had told him to sleep.

“What’s an MA813?” A girl’s voice.

“We have a ranking system for attacks. MA813 is…uh…was the strongest we’ve ever recorded.”

There was more movement. Just leave me alone, Eric thought.

“Eric. Can you hear me?”

Someone grabbed his shoulder and shook him.

“Hey,” he said, trying to bat the person’s hands away. “Just let me sleep.”

“That’s not sleep you feeling,” the older man’s voice said. “It’s my fault. We kept you under the scanner longer than we should have.”

Scanner? What was he talking about?

Eric tried to roll over so that he didn’t have to face whoever was trying to bother him, only there was nowhere for him to roll. The bed he was on was impossibly narrow, and even more uncomfortable than the cot he’d slept on at summer camp in July.

“Eric. You need to open your eyes. I know you can do it.” Maggie? Yes, it was Maggie’s voice.

Well, if Maggie wanted him to open his eyes, maybe it was okay. It felt like he’d slept for a little bit anyway. He couldn’t sleep forever, could he?

Distantly, in the very back of his mind, he heard the sing-songy voice again. Yes. Sleep forever. Yes. Yes. He tried to grab onto it, but it was already weak and fading fast.

Eric’s left eye opened just enough to let light rush in. He immediately jammed it closed, but the mere act of doing so woke him even more.

“Good. You’re almost back.” A girl’s voice. Not Maggie’s. “Try it again.”

Bracing himself for more light, he cracked open each eye so he could peer through his lashes. While it was bright, it was no longer too bright. He opened them a little more. Shapes and colors. He let his eyelids part even further. The shapes turned into arms and faces. Three faces.

Maggie, an older man, and another girl. Fi…Fi…Fiona. Yes, Fiona.

Fiona Trouble.

The Trouble family.

The attack at school. The plane. The beat-up sedan. Mr. Trouble. Mother Trouble. Keira. Uncle Colin. Uncle Carl.

The scanner.

His eyes shot all the way open.

Maggie, Fiona and the man — it was Uncle Carl — were all looking down at him from a strange angle. It took Eric a second before he realized he was lying across their laps.

Suddenly the whole world bounced, and he flew up a few inches before falling back down hard.

“Ow!” Fiona said.

“We’ve got to hold him,” Uncle Carl said. “That way we all move up and down together.”

“Where are we?” Eric asked. They certainly weren’t in the workshop any more.

“We’re in the car,” Maggie told him.

A car, of course. He, Maggie, Fiona, and Uncle Carl were in the back seat of the sedan. From his position Eric could see Mr. Trouble was driving. And though he could tell there was someone in the front passenger seat, he wasn’t sure who it was.

He started to sit up but immediately fell back onto the others’ laps, dizzy.

Mr. Trouble gave him a quick glance. “Hold on there, buddy. Pace yourself.”

From somewhere beyond the car, Eric could still hear the loud rumble he’d noticed before. Whatever it was, it was really whining away now.

“What…happened?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Uncle Carl asked.

Eric tried to think back. “The helmet vibrating on my head.”

“It’s not a—” Uncle Carl started to say.

“Shhh,” Fiona cut him off. To Eric, she said, “Go on.”

“Someone asked me if I was doing okay,” Eric continued. “And…and…and I was asleep. Then there was some shaking, and you guys woke me up.”

“Technically, you weren’t sleeping,” Mr. Trouble said.

“Then what was I doing?”

The look on Uncle Carl’s face was about as serious as Eric had seen it. “Enforced stupor.”

“Enforced what?”

“Stupor. A suspension of your conscious mind. Not asleep, but not awake either.”

“Enforced by who?”

“The Makers, of course,” Uncle Carl said. “Who else?”

“There they go!” It was Keira’s voice. Apparently, she was the one sitting in the front passenger seat.

Everyone turned to the windows. Eric pushed himself up so he could see, too. He was still a bit dizzy, but not nearly as much as he’d been a minute earlier.

They were driving up the side of the valley toward the ridge from where he’d first seen the Trouble family’s mobile headquarters. Only now the Lady Candice was racing down the makeshift runway.

“Who’s flying it?”

“Mom, of course,” Fiona said.

“But why? What’s going on?”

“Bug out,” Uncle Carl told him.

Eric looked at him, not understanding.

“It means retreat in a hurry,” Fiona explained.

“Retreat? Why?”

“Because the Makers found out where we were camped.”

“How did they do that?” he asked.

“You told them.”