Here Comes Mr. Trouble

21

Fiona put her hand on the doorknob but didn’t turn it.

“What are you waiting for?” Eric asked.

Before she could answer, the quiet outside was suddenly broken by the sound of a car racing down the street then screeching to a stop just out front.

“That,” she said, pulling the door open.

At the curb, Mr. Trouble and Uncle Carl were climbing out of the sedan. Unfortunately, the four missing surrogates were standing between them and the front door.

“You guys ready?” Mr. Trouble shouted.

“We couldn’t wake Keira or Maggie,” Fiona called out. “One of you is going to have to help us carry them.”

“Don’t worry about the girls,” he said. “We’ll get them. Just concentrate on yourselves.”

Peter Garr took a step toward the car. “You need to leave.”

One of his buddies moved up behind him, while the other two started walking toward the house.

“Fiona?” Eric said. “Maybe we should shut the door.”

“It’s going to be fine,” she told him.

From Eric’s point of view, the way the situation looked at the moment wasn’t even close to fine.

“Hey, relax, buddy,” Mr. Trouble said to Peter. “No one wants any problems.”

“That’s right. No one does,” Peter said in full monotone. “Now leave.”

“You know what? Transmit this to your little Maker masters. Mr. Trouble’s in town, and Eric is one kid you’re not getting.”

Peter had been in the process of taking another step toward the car, but he froze for a moment, his foot in the air. When he started moving again, he took several rapid steps forward, moving to within fifteen feet of the car before stopping.

“You are Mr. Trouble?” he asked.

“You’ll excuse me if I don’t pull out my driver’s license to prove it, but yeah, I am.”

“You…are…too young.”

“And you have bad hair,” Mr. Trouble countered.

Eric jabbed Fiona with his elbow and nodded toward the two surrogates heading their way. Though they were not walking fast, they didn’t have far to go and would soon be there.

“I really think we should shut the door,” he said.

“Ronan,” Fiona yelled. “I know you like talking, but maybe not now.”

Mr. Troubled glanced over. “Ah, right.” He looked back at Peter. “Sorry, can’t engage in an insult war right now. I hope you understand.”

He took a step forward and raised his arm. Moonlight glinted off something that looked kind of like a gun, but not one Eric had ever seen before. There was a pfffft, and something flew out of the barrel just slow enough for Eric to follow it.

The Peter surrogate must have seen it, too. He rolled to his left and ducked down. The object — a dart — sailed just a few inches above his back, then smacked into the upper left arm of the surrogate standing behind him.

Peter then took off running down the street, but his friend wasn’t so lucky. He stumbled forward, trying to pull the object out of his arm. When he finally got it out, he was only able to stare at it for a second before collapsing to the ground.

“Ronan!” Fiona yelled.

The two other surrogates were no longer walking toward the front door. They were running.

“Ronan!”

Mr. Trouble looked like he wanted to take off after Peter, but he looked back at the sound of his name and quickly changed directions. As he passed Uncle Carl, he motioned toward the rapidly departing Peter Garr. “Get him!”

Uncle Carl looked nervous, but did as he was told.

“Hey, over here!” Mr. Trouble yelled at the two surrogates rushing across the lawn.

Neither turned.

“Hey, I’m talking to you!”

Mr. Trouble raised his weapon and fired twice.

Pfffft. Pfffft.

The surrogate closest to the door suddenly arched his back and fell to the ground, unconscious. But the dart intended for the other one just missed its target, sailing through the air until it hit the door with a thwap.

Eric staggered back. “Close it!” he yelled at Fiona.

The remaining surrogate leapt onto the small porch and got a hand on the door just before Fiona was able to shut it all the way. As the door started opening again, she put her shoulder against it and tried to force it closed.

“Help me!” she shouted.

Eric jumped up next to her, turning so that he could put his back against the door and use his legs for leverage.

But instead of closing, the door opened further.

“We need to push harder,” she said.

Eric grunted as he shoved harder, but to no use. The door kept moving toward them, finally opening enough to allow the surrogate to stick his head inside. His eyes were open so wide Eric could see a large band of white all around each iris, but as creepy as that was, the smile on the surrogate’s face was worse.

As soon as he caught sight of Eric, he wedged his shoulders through the gap and grabbed Eric’s arm.

“You’re coming with me,” he announced, pulling Eric toward him.

“Let go of him!” Fiona yelled. She grabbed Eric’s other arm and pulled him in the opposite direction.

The surrogate laughed and gave Eric a hard tug. Fiona cried out as she lost her grip and slipped to the floor.

“I believe she told you to let go of him,” Mr. Trouble said calmly from outside.

The surrogate whipped his head around. “Get ba—”

Pfffft.

The surrogate went rigid, hanging between the door and the jamb for a second, and then, as if in slow motion, he slid all the way down to the floor.

“Anybody home?” Mr. Trouble asked, knocking on the door.

Eric stepped out of the way as Fiona pulled it open. “Ha, ha. Very funny. Can we go now?”

Mr. Trouble glanced over at Eric. “Hanging in there?”

“I guess,” Eric said, still in shock.

“That’s good enough for me.” His gaze moved down to the girls on the floor. “If you two take Maggie, I’ll get Keira.”

Mr. Trouble dragged the unconscious surrogate out of the way and pulled a large dart out of the guy’s back.

Eric and Fiona then picked up Maggie and carried her out the door. Mr. Trouble followed a second later with Keira in his arms. As they walked toward the sedan, two dark shadows stepped from across the street into the light.

Uncle Carl and Peter Garr.

Peter stood behind Uncle Carl, holding a small, odd-looking gun that Uncle Carl must have been carrying. He raised it into the air and placed it against Uncle Carl’s neck.

“Ca…careful with that,” Uncle Carl said.

The surrogate paid him no attention. “Stop walking,” he said to the others.

Mr. Trouble moved around Eric and Fiona, and didn’t stop until he was ten feet away from the surrogate. Eric and Fiona waited a couple of feet behind him.

“I’m sorry,” Uncle Carl said.

Mr. Trouble smiled. “Don’t worry, Uncle Carl. At least you tried.”

“What kind of gun is that?” Eric whispered to Fiona.

“Injection gun,” she whispered back. “You know, gives you a shot without using a needle.”

“The boy,” Peter said. “Give him to me, and you can have this one back.”

Eric heard the gate to Maggie’s backyard open. “I think the others are coming,” he said.

“No problem.” Mr. Trouble winked at Eric, then said, “It’s Peter, right? Look, Peter, I’d love to hang around and haggle with you, but I just don’t have time.”

In a single, sudden movement, he flipped Keira over his shoulder and brought up his dart gun.

Pfffft.

Peter had been hunched down behind Uncle Carl, using him as a shield.

It was a good plan, but not perfect.

The dart flew low, only a few feet above the ground, then passed between Uncle Carl’s legs and smacked into Peter’s thigh.

“No!” Peter screamed, and then, like the other surrogates, he dropped to the ground.

“Everybody in,” Mr. Trouble ordered, as two more surrogates came running around the side of the house. “Quickly.”

Mr. Trouble twisted his body around and fired off two more darts, each hitting their targets. At the same time, Eric, Fiona, and Uncle Carl climbed into the back of the sedan and laid Maggie across their laps.

Mr. Trouble got the front passenger door open and tried to quickly shove Keira inside. He banged his sister’s head against the doorframe on the first try, but got her in on the second. He then retrieved the injection gun from Peter and passed it through the window to Uncle Carl. “Yours, I believe.”

“Oh. Yes. Sorry about that. He just—”

“Uncle Carl, it’s not your fault. It’s mine.”

“Here comes some more!” Eric yelled, pointing at a group of surrogates that had appeared from around the side of the house.

Mr. Trouble slid across the hood of the car and opened the driver’s door.

Pfffft. Pfffft. Pfffft. Pfffft. Click. Click.

He jumped into the car and tossed his gun back to Fiona. “There’s a box of darts under my seat.”

As he started the engine, Eric looked at Maggie’s front yard. Half a dozen surrogates were sprawled on the lawn, taken out by Mr. Trouble’s dart gun.

“What’s going to happen when someone sees all of them lying there?”

Mr. Trouble pulled the car away from the curb, shoving the accelerator to the floor. “No one will see them. The stuff in the darts only lasts an hour or so. They’ll be up and gone before anyone else wakes up.”

“But we made a lot of noise. Someone’s probably called the police by now. They’ve got to be on their way.”

“If anyone had called the police, they would have been there already. The stupor Keira and Maggie are still under? The Makers did that to the whole neighborhood.”

“How do you know that?”

“We were in the car three blocks away and it got Uncle Carl.”

Uncle Carl looked embarrassed.

“Had to give him a shot to wake him up,” Mr. Trouble said.

“But, then, what about you? It didn’t put you to sleep?” Eric said.

“No,” Mr. Trouble replied, but didn’t explain further. “I’m sorry, everyone. I should have known they’d try something like this. We should have been prepared. That was my fault.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Uncle Carl said. “We’ve never seen anything on a scale like this before. One or two people put under at the same time, yes. Four, once, if the records are to be believed. But a whole neighborhood? Even your father wouldn’t have expected it.”

Mr. Trouble looked unconvinced, but he said nothing.

Fiona had Ronan’s dart gun propped on Maggie’s legs and was refilling it from the box that had been under the seat. Without pausing what she was doing, she said, “Uncle Carl’s right. Your plan was fine. How could any of us expect to encounter this many of them at one time? No one ever has before.”

“This many what? Surrogates?” Eric asked.

“Well, yeah, but that’s not what I meant,” Fiona said. “Makers can only control a few surrogates at a time. And we’ve never encountered more than three Makers working together. So that means we should never face more than seven or eight surrogates at one time.”

“Nine is possible,” Uncle Carl corrected her.

“But there were ten at the house,” Eric said.

“And at least six others Ronan and Uncle Carl saw wandering the neighborhood.”

“Sixteen?” Eric said. “That means there are at least, what, six Makers?”

“Unprecedented,” Uncle Carl said to himself. “Impossible.”

“Not impossible, apparently,” Mr. Trouble said, glancing at Keira. “Uncle Carl, why don’t you wake up the girls?”

“What? Oh, yes. Good idea.” Uncle Carl looked down at his jacket, realized he was holding the injection gun, and shoved it into Eric’s hands. “Hold that.”

He then searched inside his jacket for several seconds. “I thought it was right here.”

“I threw it into the glove compartment after I got what I needed to wake you,” Mr. Trouble said.

“I’ll get it,” Fiona said.

She handed Mr. Trouble’s dart gun to Eric, then scooted under Maggie’s legs and squeezed between the two front seats. Stretching, she reached for the glove compartment.

Just as she popped it open, a car shot onto the road ahead of them. Mr. Trouble stamped on the brakes and jerked the wheel to the left to get around it. But the other driver immediately pulled in front of them again.

“Hey,” Fiona said. “Hold it steady.”

“We’ve got company,” her brother explained.

She pushed herself up and glanced over the dashboard. “Oh, great.”

“Not just them,” he said, pointing at the rear window with his thumb.

Everyone looked out the back.

Two cars.

One was directly behind them, and another was coming up fast on their side.