King of the Mutants Read online

  Hey, they may have been an odd pair of shoes. But then again, we were an odd pair, too. Stumbling back to the Waffle and Bacon Hut, we burst out laughing.

  CHAPTER SIX

  HOW TO JUSTIFY THE TRUTH

  We opened the door to the restaurant, and ahhh, breathed in the aroma of crispy, greasy bacon. A couple of sleepy truckers shoved forkfuls of food into their mouths, eyes glazed over from their long journeys. They paid no attention to us as we took a seat in the back of the room. A cheery, middle-aged woman, whose nametag said Madge, walked up to us and slammed two menus on the table.

  “Nice heels,” she barked, rolling her eyes at Freddie. “Got money? I don’t want no chew and screw. They make me pay for the meals when that happens.”

  She was a real charmer.

  I pulled out a twenty from the can and placed it on the table. Madge grunted her approval. Or maybe it was disapproval. “Boy, why are you wearing sunglasses at night and a trench coat in this heat?” asked Madge.

  I wasn’t about to tell her that the trench covered my tail and that my eyes glow red at night. “Uh,” I said, thinking fast. “We just left a costume party?”

  “Just what I need. Halloween is coming early this year,” said Madge under her breath. She let out a long, dramatic sigh. “What do you want, then?”

  “Two breakfast specials and three extra orders of bacon, please,” I said.

  “Must have been some party, ’cause you kids stink to high heaven,” said Madge, writing down our order on her pad of paper. She pitched her head to the left. “The bathroom is over there. Go clean yourself up. This ain’t the circus, you know.”

  Freddie snorted.

  Madge stormed away, glaring at us like we were criminals. Which I think we were. I mean, we had stolen a bike, and I knew we were definitely fugitives. Yet, she was right—we weren’t exactly looking like movie stars at the moment. Freddie’s greasy, chicken-hair stuck out in lame pop star over styled clumps, oozy bug guts covered our bodies, and we stunk worse than a couple of farting skunks.

  We went to the bathroom and gave ourselves a good wash down—as good as we could without taking off all our clothes. Seriously, there was no way I was going to get naked in front of Freddie, or anyone else for that matter, especially in the bathroom of a Waffle and Bacon Hut.

  I wiped the fish burgers, the bugs, berry spit, and the donuts off my body using a wet paper towel. Then, I slicked back my black hair with soap. I thought I looked pretty cool, but Freddie just laughed at me. Like he was one to talk teetering in his sparkly heels.

  “Hey, Freddie,” I said. “Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz called and she wants her shoes back.”

  “Funny,” he huffed, “Not!” and tripped out the door.

  Our meals awaited us when we returned to the table. Swear to God, we inhaled our waffles in two point nine seconds flat. I guess outmaneuvering killer clowns really worked up an appetite.

  “Hey, Mav,” said Freddie, his mouth full of food. “How come you’re so comfortable with what you are? I mean all your—all your—all your—” He sounded like a broken record as he struggled to find the right words. I chose them for him.

  “You mean all my genetic mutations?” He nodded and I shrugged. “I guess it’s because being a sideshow performer is all I’ve ever really known. And you norms–that’s what we circus performers call normal people—aren’t all that perfect, you know?”

  “True, but your life at that evil circus must have sucked rotten eggs.” Freddie put his chin in his hands, resting his elbows on the table. “How did you end up there?”

  “Funny, I actually thought Burt was my dad.”

  “Do you think he could be? I mean, maybe that whole egg thing was a joke? Maybe you really are his kid—”

  “Um, no, definitely not. I asked him that question when I was four years old.” I mimicked Burt’s growling voice. “Think I’d father something as weird as you? Your parents left you here when you were two and half years old. Dumped you high and dry in the tent with the other animals. Didn’t even leave a note.”

  “Ouch, that’s harsh.” Freddie sucked in his breath. “But nobody can be that cruel all the time. He must have been nice sometimes? Right?”

  “Never. I was just a dollar sign to him, nothing more.”

  All the bad times at Grumbling’s reared their ugly heads at once. It was just like the time I was actually branded by a white-hot iron by Burt himself—a cursive G that indicated I was Grumbling property. But that letter didn’t have to mean Grumbling’s; it could stand for Gator if only I’d let it.

  “Earth to Maverick, come in Maverick?” Freddie snapped his fingers in front of my blank gaze, knocking me out of my miserable past. “You look like you want to kill somebody.”

  I glared at Freddie in distrust. “Why are you hanging around me, anyway? A freak nobody likes? What do you want?”

  “Mav, I feel like a freak all the time too. And I’ve had nobody to talk to for years,” Freddie responded. His voice sounded sincere, but then his tone changed. “Especially after my mom was murdered.”

  My eyes went wide. I didn’t expect that answer to come out of his mouth. I nodded for him to carry on.

  Freddie gulped, his grief unmistakable. “My mom was just a teacher at this private school. I don’t know why anyone would have wanted to hurt her. I mean, come on, it was middle grade! And the most upsetting thing was the night her body was found floating in the Hudson, I’d been sleeping over at my friend Ashby’s house. The next morning they rushed me off to child services. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

  He paused, getting really choked up.

  “I don’t know who my dad is, I have no living relatives that I know of, and then I was put with this horrible foster family in upstate New York. Just like you were, I was just a big fat paycheck to them. They treated me like a slave. Smacked me around, too.”

  I thought Freddie was going to burst out into tears, which would have made me really uncomfortable. Not that I was insensitive, I just hadn’t heard others’ problems before. Turns out, Freddie, like me, had some gargantuan issues. I didn’t know what to say, so I whispered the only appropriate thing that came to mind. “Freddie, I’m really sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You didn’t kill my mom,” he managed to wheeze out. His eyes darkened. “But one day I’m going to find out who did.”

  “Want anything else?” interrupted Madge.

  “Um, we need to get to New Orleans,” said Freddie, clearly relieved to change the subject. He blinked away his tears and straightened up in his seat. “You don’t have a map we can buy?”

  “No, no map, and that outside, why, that’s the wrong highway to take. You gotta backtrack some and get yourselves on the US 27 and then the I-10.” Madge must have read our confused expressions. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, I’m off the clock in ten minutes and heading out that way. You boys can follow me—the blue Ford with the SUGAR vanity plates.”

  Apparently we’d judged Madge wrong. Under her bulldog-like exterior, a sweet old lady tried to get out. I left her an extra big tip and we went outside to give the sleeping Snaggletooth his bacon. Which he inhaled. Thankfully, the rain had tapered off to a slight drizzle. Like clockwork, exactly ten minutes later, Madge pulled up to us in her powder blue Ford Fairlane.

  “Nice wheels,” she said, giving our ride the once over and cracking a withered smile.

  Weird. Madge never questioned why two young kids were driving around in a tricked out chopper or why we were headed to New Orleans well past midnight. I guess in her line of work, she’d seen everything. Either that, or she needed glasses.

  We followed the Ford to the interstate entrance, and Madge waved us off, pointing us toward the on-ramp. After our long day, I was pretty tired and a little depressed. It was that whole being-hatched-from-an-egg thing getting me down. I tried to focus on more pleasant thoughts. Like I now had a friend I could actually talk to, a loyal dog, and I had left the ci
rcus. However, I couldn’t help but wonder how I would survive on my own. I didn’t know how to cook, unless you count making a peanut butter and cotton candy sandwich. I didn’t have a place to live. Plus, once we got to the Big Apple, my life savings would disappear quicker than Peaches devouring ten pies.

  I tapped Freddie on the shoulder and pointed at the fuel gauge, hovering on “E.” He nodded and pulled off at the next gas station. I couldn’t budge from exhaustion, so I handed Freddie a fistful of dollar bills. He hobbled into the station’s shop—in his heels—while I stayed in the sidecar with Snaggletooth.

  A few moments later, Freddie bounded toward me with an ear-to-ear grin. I looked at his feet, on them, a pair of black flip-flops. Gone were the red heels. Under normal circumstances, I would have high-fived him, or done the hands-to-the-middle knuckle bump, but I was too tired. Adding to my discomfort, my tail throbbed from sitting on it for too long. My mood, just like the rotten luck in my life, was sour.

  “We’re forty-five minutes away from New Orleans,” he said excitedly. Freddie filled up Cherry Pie and I just watched my money disappear into her gas tank.

  “Hey, I hope you don’t mind, but I bought a pair of cheap flip flops. A ninety-nine cents special. Can’t beat that.” He tossed the ridiculous red shoes into a garbage can. “Dang, I don’t know how women wear those things. I have blisters all over my feet. Oh yeah, this guy told me about this cheap hostel we can stay in. It’s only twenty bucks a night and I got directions.”

  The price was right for the hostel and it was music to my tired ears. I couldn’t wait to get there and rest my aching head. Maybe take a nice cool shower. “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get our butts to New Orleans and into bed.”

  While Freddie finished up at the pump, I noticed a strange man digging through the garbage. See, the peculiar thing about this particular guy was that he wore a blue sequined dress and a blond wig. Now because this lot was well lit, I could see his Adam’s apple and facial hair from twenty feet away, so I knew he was definitely a guy dressed up in women’s clothes. He wasn’t a bearded lady; that was for sure.

  As we pulled out of the station, the man danced spastically in Freddie’s stolen, red heels, giggling like a giddy schoolgirl on a playground. He caught me staring so I gave him the thumbs up. He responded with a triple snap, a laugh, and then skipped happily down the road. I burst out laughing.

  According to Freddie, we were heading to Billy Bob’s Bayou Boarding House and Boogaloo Bar in New Orleans. I didn’t know what this place would say about Snaggletooth, but I’d come up with some kind of plan—I always did. Besides, they wouldn’t know an alligator boy slept in one of their beds, now would they?

  By the time we found Billy Bob’s, it was three in the morning and my heart sunk when I saw the joint. I thought, rather wrongly, that we would be staying in a nice part of town. You know, by the old mansions or on one of those busy streets? First of all, Billy Bob’s sat on top of a packed, loud bar that played crazed music. And second, groups of homeless people slept in piles of garbage just outside the front door.

  Somebody must have just bombed the building. The iron balconies were about to fall off. Holes marred the surface, bricks crumbling down onto the sidewalk. A bright neon sign, hung with shoddy wires that sparked, flashed, “Now playing, Zombie Zydeco.”

  The worst-of-the-worst accosted us the moment we pulled Cherry Pie up to the front—panhandlers, conartists, thieves, thugs, drug dealers, and pimps. You know, the typical types we nice kids hang out with on a school night. All of the hoodlums surrounded us like rats fighting over a piece of cheese.

  A man dressed head-to-toe in white waggled his finger in our direction. Inside the heels of his patent leather platform shoes, live goldfish swam around. Thick gold chains and an open shirt brought attention to a long scar that looked fake—like he’d drawn it on with a red marker to look tough. He smiled. His grills, encrusted with real diamonds, shimmered in the moonlight.

  “You looking for a good time?” he said, his accent lilting.

  I had visions of elephants, because this guy was Indian, not American Indian, but from India.

  “Them young things are always looking for a good time,” said a white guy wearing a doo-rag and a big gold necklace that said “Player.” He held a plastic bag filled with purple pills in front of Freddie’s face. “Let’s say we has ourselves a party. Know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Get away from us,” screamed Freddie. He held up his hands in Judo-chop position. “If you don’t, I’ll call the cops!”

  All the hooligans burst out laughing.

  “I am the police,” said Doo-rag. He held out a badge. “So go ’head and call me!”

  A toothless man with an irregular shaped head pushed everybody away. If he had been green, he would have resembled a giant praying mantis. He wagged his skinny finger at the wackadoos. “Get,” Toothless threatened, “or I’ll call the General. And y’all don’ want to make the General angry.”

  Grunts and moans emitted from the crowd and they scattered across the street.

  The man dressed in white said, “Oh snap! You are one crazy mizzle dizzle for shizzle.” Due to his accent, his voice rose and fell in a high pitch. Then, he turned on his heel and in a controlled, almost cool swagger; he limped down the dark road, his shoulders leading the way. I assumed this “General” was a force to be reckoned with because nobody, except Toothless, stuck around.

  Freddie’s top lip curled up. “Are we seriously crashing here?”

  “How bad can it really be?” I said with a shrug. “Right now, I need toothpicks to keep my eyes open. Besides, it’s too late to try and find any place else for twenty bucks a night.”

  “I just hope we don’t get killed—”

  I burst out laughing. Freddie joined in. When you compared the guys on this street to anybody at Grumbling’s, it was like a picnic in the park on a warm summer day.

  “Look, if this place is really, really bad, we’ll go sleep in a field or something,” I said. I stuffed Snaggletooth into my duffle bag to sneak him in to the boarding house, which he didn’t seem to mind. “I just really need a cold shower.”

  “You are smelling rather ripe,” said Freddie.

  Before I could deliver my comeback, Toothless interrupted us. “See, now, I got your back,” he slurred. His breath smelled like the inside of a garbage truck filled with decaying rats. He whistled at Cherry Pie and ran his grimy hand across the sidecar. Dirt encrusted his fingernails. “Want me to watch your bike? All it will cost you is fifty-tay-tay and a handshake-shake-kay.”

  I ignored Toothless when I got out of the sidecar, but he positioned himself in front of me, blocking my path. His eyes looked like they could bleed they were so red—like he might have a strange disease like Ebola or something else deadly and contagious. I pushed by him using my bag as a barrier.

  “You going to be sorry you did that,” he said, stumbling to the side. “Good thing to having someone watch your back in N’Awlens.”

  In this kind of darkness my eyes glowed a fiery red. I lifted my sunglasses to the top of my head, bared my teeth, and hissed, “If you or one of your friends gets near our bike, I’ll hunt you down and rip you to shreds. I suggest you keep an eye on it for free.”

  Toothless grunted.

  Freddie jabbed me in the ribs. “How bad can it really be?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HOW TO GET A FAKE ID

  Yellow wooden arrows directed us toward the entrance to the boarding house. We followed them and found ourselves in a dark, dumpster-filled alley. A loud moan, followed by an even louder bang, emitted from one of them. Black gunk oozed off its side. We steered clear of it. Freddie stepped on a pile of newspapers that squealed “ouch,” which was weird, but neither of us wanted to find the source of the noise. Then I think a cat ran in front of us. Either that, or it was a really, really big rat. At the end of the alley, a large black door with a big orange, neon sign re
ading “entrance” summoned us. We made a run for it.

  Cockroaches the size of mice scattered as we entered a dingy room lit by flickering fluorescent lights. It was so humid inside it felt like we were in a sauna. There were a couple of grimy chairs, a payphone without an earpiece, and a Plexiglas barrier. Behind the barrier sat a chair, and in that, an old, wrinkled Cajun woman wearing a bathrobe and head wrap slept. A record player whined out scratchy Blues music in the background.

  I pressed the bell on the counter and breathed in a mouthful of musky air, a combination of sweat, dirt, and urine. The old lady didn’t budge and I wondered if she was dead. We must have been staring at her for at least five minutes until a deep voice behind us drawled, “Reckon you need a room?”

  I turned around to face a man who resembled Elvis Presley—not young Elvis, but old, bloated Elvis. He had slick-backed, greasy hair, giant glasses—the kind that bug someone’s eyes all out, a funky cowboy hat with twinkling lights, and dirty overalls held up with a belt—its shiny, silver buckle as big as a bowling ball. No shirt. He eyed the woman behind the counter.

  “Don’t worry, Henriette is alive. She’s just older than dirt and dog-gone tired, could sleep through a hurricane. In fact, I think she has.” Scary Elvis looked us over. “Whachew boys doing out so late? Running away from home, I reckon?”

  Freddie stared at me, both of us unsure how to respond.

  “No,” I explained. “We’re running away from the circus.” The man chuckled and motioned for me to carry on. “And we need a place to stay tonight.”

  “Twenty bucks, right?” inquired Freddie.

  “That’s right.” He hooked his thumbs into his overall straps, rocked back and forth on his cowboy-clad heels, and smiled. His teeth jutted out of his mouth like square, yellow Chiclets. “But I’ll need to see some iden-ti-fa-ca-tion.”

  “We don’t have any,” I said. “Why do we need them?”