The Danger Gang and the Isle of Feral Beasts! Read online

  “My name is Elias,” he said. “I live here with my mom.” He clicked on a hot plate and filled a small pot with cocoa powder and milk. “She’s a scientist, here on a project. We just started a few weeks ago.”

  It was raining again, and we could hear it pinging on the domed roof of the theater. Jeeves and I dragged chairs next to the fire while Elias finished the cocoa.

  “What’s your mother studying?” Jeeves asked.

  “You didn’t happen to see any animals outside, did you?”

  “Six hundred or so,” I said. “Maybe more.”

  Elias gave me a little smirk and passed me a cup of cocoa. “Those are fennec foxes. They come from Algeria, just like my mom.”

  “What are foxes from Algeria doing on Capstone Island?” Jeeves asked.

  Elias took a long sip of his cocoa and sat down in a third seat. I could tell he was starting to feel safe. His eyes twinkled a little in the firelight. “Have you ever heard of an actor named Josh Brigand?”

  Jeeves shot me a glance.

  I leaned forward in my seat. “Believe it or not, Josh Brigand is the reason we’re here.”

  “Us too!” Elias said. He pointed to the wall, which was hung with black-and-white photos. I could see that each one was for a different Capstone movie—Hail, Rome!, The Sinking of the Titanic, The Search for the Sundance Kid, The Sinking of the Titanic II.

  “A few years ago, Josh Brigand shot a movie here for Capstone Pictures,” Elias went on. “In it, his plane crashed and he had to wander the rocky desert for days without water.”

  “My grandfather and I saw that one,” I said. “It’s called Stranded in an Ancient Land.”

  “Well,” Elias said, “when they were filming, the movie crew brought in a dozen fennec foxes, so that it would look more like the Sahara Desert. But when the movie wrapped, they left the animals behind.”

  “So they’ve completely overrun the island?” Jeeves asked.

  Elias took a sip of cocoa and nodded. “The foxes keep having babies because there are no predators. So my mom got an offer from the Capstone Island Science Trust to study them for a year.” He stopped short, looked at Jeeves and me, and then spoke again, in a low voice. “But strange things have been happening ever since we arrived.”

  “What sorts of things?” I asked.

  “People come onto the island late at night. Boats tie up or drift in the harbor. Sometimes they light bonfires on the beaches. Then tonight, a group of men broke into the theater when I was asleep.”

  “Where’s your mom?”

  “The foxes are more active after dark,” Elias said. “So every night she has to go watch them. A few times she took me, but then I was groggy the whole next day.”

  Jeeves and I waited for him to go on. I could see that there was something else.

  “Also, Mom said not to talk about it, because it’s not scientifically possible, but . . . ​a few nights ago, there was something in the fog . . . offshore. It looked . . . it looked—”

  “Like it had glowing eyes and was spitting fire?” I asked.

  FACT: Ronald Zupan had been awake for at least three minutes, just waiting for the perfect moment to join the conversation!

  I leaped to my feet, then staggered again. The blankets were tangled around my ankles and my head throbbed. Also, I didn’t have a shirt on.

  “Ronald,” Jeeves said, “meet Elias.”

  I wrapped one of the blankets around my shoulders like an Argentinian serape and stared down at the young stranger.

  “Sorry about your head,” Elias said.

  “Ronald Zupan is highly resistant to pain,” I replied.

  “You are? That’s cool!” His face shifted a little. “I would’ve been hurt.”

  I reached behind my ear and traced my wound, wincing. “What were you saying about something in the fog?”

  Elias wet his lips but Jeeves held up a hand to stop him. “Sorry, but we don’t have time for more Serpent of the Mist talk just now.”

  “Jeeves,” I said, “don’t you see that the Serpent might be—”

  “Side adventure,” the butler sang. “And I believe in a side adventure, the only rule is: keep things simple.” He looked to Elias. “Now, which way did you say the kidnappers went?”

  “There’s a ladder behind the curtain. It leads to the boiler room. They went in there.”

  In seconds, we were racing down the sweeping staircase, into the lobby of the theater and toward the spot where I was knocked out.

  We ducked past the velvet curtain and Elias pointed to an open hatch, with a ladder disappearing into the darkness.

  “I was in the catwalk, trying to decide what to do when you all rushed in. I thought you were more bad guys, so . . .”

  My eyes darted over to the sandbag that had floored me.

  “Are we following them?” Julianne asked.

  Elias slipped away for a second and came back with a lantern. “My mom set these around the theater because the storms sometimes knock the power out.”

  He handed it to Julianne with a book of matches. She lit the wick and turned the knob so that it was barely burning.

  “The caretaker of the island told me not to explore down there,” Elias said. “She read me a poem about how it’s cursed . . .” He grinned. “But I did it anyway.”

  “What did you find?” Jeeves asked.

  “Tunnels,” Elias said. “There are old tunnels leading all directions.”

  I peered down into the boiler room but couldn’t see much. “Abandoned mine shafts? Ancient catacombs?”

  Elias shook his head. “There was a book left behind when my mom and I got here. It’s called The Capstone Moving Picture Company: The First 30 Years. There’s a part where it says that when the company bought the island they dug a bunch of tunnels, so that the surface could look deserted in the movies. The only two buildings are this one and the caretaker’s house.”

  “Did the book say what’s down there?” Julianne asked.

  “It’s supposed to be everything they’d need for a production—dressing rooms, prop closets, a dining hall . . .”

  Jeeves bulged his lower lip with his tongue. “The FIB might have moved in when the movie company left.”

  I started down the ladder. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  “Without swords?” Jeeves asked. “Are we going to protect ourselves with a cheese wedge and a bottle of champagne?”

  I gave him a winning smile. “Think of how impressed my parents would be by that.”

  Jeeves groaned. “And what happens when—”

  “If we see something,” I interrupted, “we’ll double back here and come up with a plan. It’s a scouting mission. Like Francisco and Helen in the Temple of Tikal.”

  Jeeves turned to Julianne.

  She shrugged. “It’s really our only choice. Besides, we have the pieces of the coffee machine.”

  “Excellent,” Jeeves said. “Maybe we can offer them all espressos right before they pummel us.”

  Just as I climbed onto the ladder, Elias touched my shoulder.

  “I’m not coming. When my mom gets back, she’ll see the broken lock. I don’t want to scare her.”

  I nodded. “You can still help us. Just stay close. We might have to retreat back to the theater.”

  “I’ll get a few more sandbags ready,” Elias said.

  A thought struck me. “One more thing. Do you think I could borrow that book, the one about the island? It might have something we need to know.”

  “Sure thing!”

  As Elias sprinted up the theater aisle, I lowered myself down the ladder—every rung bringing me closer to a meeting with the FIB.

  As soon as Elias dropped the book down to Julianne, she tucked it inside our satchel.

  “Good luck!” Elias called.

  The light in the theater silhouetted him.

  “The Danger Gang doesn’t need luck!” I said. “And we never forget a friend!”

  “The Danger Gang,” Elias repeated. “That sounds cool. How could I become a member?”

  I looked at my partner in dazzling schemes. She turned up her palms and shrugged.

  “Well . . . ​we haven’t discussed how someone would join,” I said. “What would you say to starting out as a ‘temporary member’ and—”

  “Deal!” Elias said. “You can count on me, temporary member of the Danger Gang.”

  I thanked him and stepped away from the trapdoor. Julianne lengthened the wick on our lantern.

  “The dastardly dogs clearly knew about the tunnels when they broke into the theater,” I said. “They’re either using them to get somewhere without being discovered, or—”

  “Or this is the somewhere they’re trying to get to,” Jeeves finished. “It’s secret and has multiple entry points—a perfect hideout.”

  “Well,” Julianne said with the lantern in one hand and the arm of the coffee maker in the other, “we’re about to find out.”

  We stood by the boiler for a long minute, with steam coming off our wet clothes. Finally, I stepped forward and threw open the room’s only door. Sure enough, we were in a tunnel—dark and silent.

  We crept along, with the lantern casting its light a few feet ahead of us. It was as quiet as a hibernating wood frog, and there was a certain heavy stillness in the air. You could just feel that you were deep below the earth.

  We moved through the tunnels in complete silence. The floors were made of cold, polished concrete, and our wet shoes squished with each step. Every twenty feet there was a door. Some were closed and others stood half-open, but we didn’t slow down enough to look inside.

  “It’s almost like walking through the halls of Silver Hills Middle School on the first day of summer,” Julianne muttered.


  “Sato,” I said, “we have more than enough to worry about without bringing up public school.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Julianne said. “Jeez.”

  We walked a half mile or so without seeing anything. Finally, the tunnel curved slightly and we stopped—ready for whatever might leap out at us. But it wasn’t goons that we saw next; it was a crossroads. The tunnel branched off in three directions.

  I knelt at the entrance to each path, peering close to the ground to look for disturbances in the dust. After a minute, I turned to my friends and shrugged.

  “Just like old Jeff Brimley not to leave a clue,” I said. “A piece of fabric, or another shoe or—”

  I was interrupted by the distant echoes of Brigand’s voice bouncing down one of the tunnels.

  “Help!” the movie star begged. “Hellllllp!”

  “That good enough?” Julianne asked, charging after the voice.

  Jeeves and I followed her as fast as we could. Soon the doors we passed started to blur, and the only sounds we could hear were the jangling of the lantern, the squelching of our shoes on the concrete, and our own heavy breathing.

  We ran without coming to any more splits for a long time. Finally, we saw a sharp turn ahead and skidded to a halt. We peered around the corner. There was a rectangle of dark blue amid all the blackness.

  “Slowly,” Jeeves said, raising the lid of the coffee maker. “Slowly.”

  We crept forward, ears perked for any sound. After twenty steps, we could see that the blue rectangle was an open door, which emptied onto a moonlit meadow. It looked like the storm had broken completely.

  Julianne put down the lantern and we stepped outside with our pieces of coffee maker held high. There were no signs of the FIB or Josh Brigand. There didn’t seem to be anyone at all.

  Jeeves walked forward fifty feet, then reared back as if he’d been stung by a scorpion.

  “What is it?” I called.

  “Come here,” he said. “But be careful.”

  Julianne and I crept forward. Jeeves was crouching with his arms wide, as if to hold us back, still gripping the lid to the coffee machine in one hand.

  “I hate heights,” he whispered, voice trembling.

  We drew up alongside him. Julianne let out a little whistle.

  FACT: We’d come to the edge of a cliff--two hundred feet tall if it was an inch.

  I pointed to the beam of a flashlight, far below us. “That must be them.”

  A second later the light started to move, then we heard a dull buzz.

  “They’re in a boat!” Julianne said. “We have to do something!”

  I looked down at the cold water. “We could—”

  “If we jumped we would die,” Jeeves said. “From fifty feet, fine. Maybe seventy-five in a pinch.”

  “We jumped off a cliff in Borneo that was a hundred,” I said.

  Jeeves scoffed. “Not a memory I’m fond of, but this is double that. From this high, the water would feel like a slab of stone.”

  Jeeves seemed to know way too much about jumping from cliffs. I guess when you’re the butler for a family like the Zupans, you learn those sorts of things. Anyway, I have to admit I was only half listening.

  Why had the FIB come to Capstone Island if they were only going to disappear again? How had they known about the tunnels? Most of all, where were they going now?

  I wanted to write some notes in my adventure journal, so I ran to grab the lantern. Back at the cliff, I wrote down everything that had been said over the radio—hoping desperately to find a clue.

  “There’s a way down!” I called to my partner in dazzling schemes.

  Jeeves and I had been disagreeing about how the kidnappers got to their boat when he practically kicked the top rung of an iron ladder.

  “See that?” I said, patting him on the back. “Once again, our teamwork leads to a discovery.”

  Julianne trotted toward us. It wasn’t actually one ladder; it was at least ten, built in sections. Every thirty feet there was a platform, like a giant fire escape bolted to the side of the cliff. The storm clouds had cleared, but it was still too dark to see what was at the very bottom.

  “Where might they be racing off to?” Jeeves asked, with the wind tossing his wispy hair.

  Julianne and I shook our heads. We needed a crucial clue or a dazzling deduction. I’d have settled for a half-baked hunch. Instead, we saw a flashing blue light, bouncing and bobbing behind us.

  We wheeled around just as a Jeep rumbled into view, skidding to a halt between the tunnel door and our spot on the cliff. A rough voice crackled over the intercom.

  “This is the Capstone Island Security Team. Stay where you are.”

  I looked over my shoulder and saw that the light at the bow of the FIB boat was just the tiniest dot now. The villains were getting away.

  I turned back toward the Jeep. Dawn was only a few hours off and it was getting easier to see. Two tough-looking men sprang from the car. They were both shorter than Jeeves but twice as thick, with arms that stretched their blue uniforms.

  One man wore a mustache, but not the type favored by master adventurers like Ronald Zupan. It was the type favored by Siberian walruses, with bristles that completely covered his upper lip.

  The other man wore a navy-blue sailor’s hat with a gold anchor on it. His eyes were watery, and he held a toothpick pressed between his thin lips.

  “Who are you three?” the man with the mustache demanded, looking us up and down. “And what are you doing on Capstone Island?”

  I straightened up. “We’re the founding members of the—”

  “Kids Cozy Camping Club,” Julianne interrupted, shooting me a look.

  The man with the sailor’s hat flicked his toothpick to the ground. “Well, you’re not supposed to camp here without permission from the caretaker.” He glanced sideways at his partner. “How do you think this all sounds, Bill?”

  The officer called Bill threw the door to the tunnel shut. It closed with a heavy CLANG!

  “Looks to me like they were in the tunnels, Jake,” Bill said. “And no one is supposed to be in the tunnels.”

  He unbuttoned a wooden nightstick off his belt and twirled it a few times. “Get in the Jeep.”

  I eyed Jeeves and Julianne. It didn’t look good for us, but we’d been in tighter spots. We were close to a sheer cliff, facing two brawny men with nightsticks, and our only weapons were pieces of an antique coffee maker and some picnic supplies.

  Still, we could fight. Or we could pretend like we were going with them, then run. Or we could even—­

  “Whatever you say!” Julianne said in a cheery voice. She trotted over to the Jeep, stepped up on a tire, and slid into the back seat.

  FACT: Or we could do that.

  Here’s the thing: the kidnappers were cruising away with Josh Brigand. What were we going to do next? Chase them without a boat? Cross the island with all the foxes?

  The trail was cold. So when two men drive up, saying they’re security for an abandoned island, you think, This smells fishy, and If I play my cards right, I just might learn something.

  Jeeves gave me a baffled shrug. “I suppose it’s the best option we’ve got.”

  He approached the Jeep and folded his long legs into the back seat. I heard a little squeak off to my right, and I saw the shadowy outline of a fennec fox watching me. Then another popped up beside it.

  “They found us!” Bill yelled. “Start the motor!”

  He ran to the car and dove into the passenger side. Jake was already in the driver’s seat. He leaned out the window and slapped the door. “It’s come with us or stay with the foxes, kid.”

  Thirty foxes prowled close, their yellow eyes focused just on me. They snarled and pawed the ground.

  “Maybe this isn’t a bad idea after all,” I said.

  I ran and slid into the car next to Jeeves. We bucked along a rocky path, up another hill, and down into the valley below. The eyes of foxes shone out of the darkness in every direction, but they kept their distance.

  “We have to get you two warmed up,” Jeeves said. “I wish these pieces of the coffee machine could actually brew something hot.”

  “Master adventurers never get cold,” I insisted. “I’m perfectly fine.”