"The first obstacle is Harvey himself", Egbert said, "The cake is his big price, his one shot at getting back in favor with the top KND brass, so he won't let it out of his sight for a moment. We need to neutralize him, and for that we need "Ultra-blood freezing horror magazine".
The evening sun was bathing Sector W's treehouse in a warm, red glow. It was not one of the KND organizations larger treehouses, but it was impressive enough – two fortified floors storing dominated by the large circular control room in the corner of the structure, a balcony spanning the house at first floor height, and a large steel door
The place was clearly under lockdown – all the window s of the control room was barred with steel shudders and over the main door to the house a big red "NO ENTRY (AT ALL)" sign was flashing on and off.
Barry was skipping up to the KND mailbox next to the door, a large brown envelope in his hand. He dropped it into the slit and hurried back down the pad and around the edge of the fence that surrounded the ground, where Egbert and Kyle were currently wrestling to get a 2 liter can of whipped cream into one of Kyles coat pockets.
"You HAD to get the biggest one in the shop", Egbert hissed.
"It was on sale," Kyle whined.
"You remember to get the mag back, right?" Barry asked, as he started taking off his shirt, "My brother gets a fit if I lose it."
"We'll remember, all right", Egbert said, as he finally got the can in with only a slight ripping sound. "Just get in the costume."
XXX
Harvey McKenzie was sitting in the sofa of Sector W's command room, feeling extremely pleased with himself. The cake was standing in front of him on a piedestal, behind a locked cage equipped with a flashing KND ALARM (Anti Larceny Alarming Racket Mechanism). The more he looked at it, the more delicious it looked. He lost himself in a daydream, where he presented the Delightful Childrens cake to the Soopreme Leader in the great hall on the Moonbase in front of the entire KND. She slapped him on the shoulder, said she had been wrong about him, and asked him to resume command over Sector W … pretty please. Behind her his sister was smiling warmly at him. The dream had been all the sweeter for the knowledge that it would all come true tomorrow.
"Hey, Numbuh 363"
Numbuh 83's voice woke Harvey from the dream with a start.
"There was something for you in the mailbox", she said, and held forward a large brown envelope with the name "McKenzie" written in pencil.
Puzzled, Harvey took the envelope and opened it with a finger.
A large glossy magazine slipped out. A horrifyingly deformed rat/spider zombie glared up at him from the front page, under blood-red worm-shaped letters.
Harvey's heart skipped a beat. It was an issue of "Ultimate Blood-freezing Horror Magazine". Over a hundred pages of zombies, vampires, monsters and giant spiders lovingly drawn in every gory detail. It was absolutely forbidden to read for ANYONE under thirteen, and therefore the secret desire of 99 % of all little boys. He had never seen more than a few pages, ultra-quickly skimmed on the stand while the comic book vendor looked the other way.
Feeling like he was about to enter a new phase of his boyhood, Numbuh 363 picked up the magazinesettled down in the sofa and was just about to open it, when he noticed Numbuh 84 was peeking over his shoulder.
"Hey", Numbuh 363 snatched the magazine away. "It's MY magazine. And you'll just get scared and run home to mommy if you take a peek!"
"Come on, Numbuh 363, that's not fair", numbuh 83 protested a little nervously. "Lee can borrow it when you're finished, right?"
"'s cool" Numbuh 84 said. He slouched over to the door, pressed the "ALARM off" button, muttered something about "inspection round" and disappeared out the door.
XXX
"The next obstacle is to get into the treehouse. The door is solid steel, locked and barred and behind it is a hallway with a motion-triggered alarm that goes off if a hamster as much as drops a hair. It is completely impossible to get in unnoticed – how ever: Numbuh 83, Lee, can't stand being in the same room as Harvey for longer periods of time, so sooner or later he will do an inspection round to get away from him – and that's our chance."
Barry was peeking around the corner, keeping a watchful eye on the balcony of the treehouse. He was wearing a fake beard, blue pants, red and white striped shirt and a boater hat. A big banner now hung from the side of the vending stand next to him, reading
VINTAGE AND SPECIALTY YO-YO'S
The moment the characteristic form of Numbuh 84 appeared on the balcony, Barry started to wheel it down the street, in wiew of the treehouse
"ALL IN YO-YO'S", Barry yelled, "YO-YO'S R' US. FOR FUN, SPORT AND COMBAT. BEST QUALITY. VERY CHEAP."
Lee disappeared from the balcony, and Barry adjusted his steps, so he was still in plain view of the treehouse as Numbuh 84 emerged from the entrance and started running towards him. A moment after, Barry saw Eggy and Kyle emerging from the bush, where they had been hiding, and disappearing into the treehouse. Barrys smile widened under the beard.
"Hi there, sir" he greeted Lee, "You want to buy a yo-yo? Anything in particular you fancy? … A Boomerang Bomber? Let me see …"
XXX
"At some point Numbuh 83, Sonia, will go down to see what's keeping Lee away for so long. We'll need to distract her, and fortunately she has a weakness, that we can exploit …"
"Here" Egbert whispered to Kyle, when they reached a certain point in the hallway of the treehouse. "The broken lightbulb, quickly".
Kyle pulled the broken lightbulb from a pocket in his overcoat and handed it to Egbert, then squatted down and helped Egbert climb up on his shoulders, so he could reach the lamp in the ceiling. Egbert quickly remobed the bulb in the lamp, then replaced it the bulb in the lamp with the broken one, leaving the a part of the hallway in semi-darkness. He jumped down and the two boys quickly hid behind the corner.
XXX
"Numbuh 84 sure is taking a lot of time getting back", Numbuh 83, said.
"Uh-huh" Harvey said, not at all listening. Toxic vapours were seeping over the old graveyard, tunneling their way down to the rotten corpses beneath….
"I'll go out and check on him. Can you watch the cake alone for a moment?"
"Uh-huh"! Rotten bones of rats and men started slowly to creep towards each other .
Numbuh 83 sighed and left the control room.
XXX
"No, I am sorry, no Boomerang Bombers, sir", Barry said "How about a Winning Whizz-bang? No, wait, sorry, sold the last one two hours ago. How about a …"
XXX
The blonde, pig-tailed Leader of Sector W was not in a good mood as she was walking down the hallway. She felt like she spent all her time doing stuff like this, mending rifts between Numbuh 84 and Numbuh 363. Things went OK on the missions, but as soon as they had downtime the bickering started, well Harvey bickered, anyway. Lee just got even more silent than usual. The general mood in Sector W had gotten so bad that the sectors fourth member, the carrot-topped freak-show, Numbuh 87, had asked to be transferred to his dreaded big sister's Decommissioning squad. And now this with them guarding the cake all night. It would have been much safer to have the cake transferred to Moonbase immediately, but Harvey had insisted that only he and his sector could guard the cake properly. She didn't like it – at all.
Suddenly Sonia stiffened. Right in front of her, the hallway lay in darkness where it bend around a corner. Her nervousness gave place for anger, how many times had she told Lee and Harvey that all broken light bulbs were to be replaced ASA-NOW. She turned around and walked over to the well-lid stair that led to the attic light-bulb storage room and went up for a replacement bulb.
As soon as she had disappeared Egbert and Kyle scurried down the hallway towards the control room.
XXX
" … Yes, we have one of those, sir. I'll get it … no. wait. That was the one where the string went bad, so I had to toss it out. It came back 74 times, before I succeeded …"
XXX
"Now we just need to get past Harvey. At this point he'll have read so much "Ultimate horror" that his brain will be totally pants-wettingly psyked up, and can be easily put out of the game . Here we use the scary Halloween masks"
The giant rat-faced ghost zombie jumped straight at him in an inferno of red eyes, yellow saliva, rotten meat and razor-sharp teeth.
Numbuh 363's mouth was dry, his hands were shaking and his heart rate was pushing the impossible. Every page had hit him like a punch in the gut, followed by a bucket of ice water down the spine
He should stop reading, he knew, but then how would he know if the rat-zombies were ever defeated and would not come … HERE.
"WOOORRAAAGGGHHH"
Harvey flew out of the sofa with a scream. Two ENORMOUS monsters with HORRIBLY deformed faces suddenly bolted out of the doorway straight at him, grasping arms outstretched, fangy mouths ready to kill … For a fraction of a second Harvey stood paralyzed, then his eyes rolled back in their sockets, and he fell to the floor like a small bag of potatoes.
"Is he … dead", Kyle murmured behind his Halloween mask.
"We should be so lucky," Egbert said behind his. "He'll probably wake up in a few minutes, so we don't have much time. "
"We short-circuit the ALARM by filling it with whipped cream, open the cage with the crowbar, grab the cake, wrench open a shutter and climb out with the cake, grabbing Barry's brother's magazine on the way. Barry gets rid of Lee and meets us later, and then we keep a low profile until after the birthday party tomorrow. Piece of cake."
XXX
Barry's heart skipped a beat as he over Lee's head saw Eggy and Kyle appear from behind the treehouse carrying the cake. "You might try the Swinging Sensation, sir. The number one choice for combat, light, yet hard-hitting – I'll see if I have one in stock." Behind Lee, Kyle and Eggy were running towards the corner. Barry made a big show of rummaging through the vending stand. "No, I'm afraid I don't. In fact …" Eggy, Kyle and the cake disappeared around the corner. "In fact I don't have any yo-yo's sir, I'm afraid I was completely wasting your time. I'm very sorry about that. Have a good night." Barry slammed the vending stand shut, and started pushing it briskly down the road, in the direction Eggy and Kyle had went.
Lee stood dumbstruck and stared after him.
"Not cool", he muttered, turned around and started to walk back towards the treehouse.
XXX
Harvey woke up and jumped up from the floor, instantly in a combat pose – the monsters, he looked around frantically, where were the monsters?
Then his eyes fell on the rope, on the broken ALARM still dripping whipped cream and on the cage, that had once contained his cake - and now was as empty and broken as his hopes.
Something inside HarveyMcKenzie, that had longed been stretched to the breaking point, finally burst. His mouth started twitching. His hands started shaking. A strange gurgling snarl emerged from his throat. He ripped his sweatshirt over his head and threw it on the floor, and ran, naked to the waist over to the weapons cabinet, where he grabbed two GUMZOOKAS, two ammo belts and a bottle of ketchup.
"Steal my cake, eh?", he muttered, "I'll show him", before jumping out the window, sliding down the rope and disappearing into the gathering dusk.
XXX
"Holy cow-moley, we're brilliant!" Barry sang as the three gang-members were running away from the tree-house, the cake now safely hidden in the vending stand . "I am brilliant, and you're brilliant, Kyle, and Eggy – you're the brilliantest brilliant kid in the whole world."
"Well, I know some tricks," Eggy said, with faux modesty. "Now, we just run home and lie low, and tomorrow there's cake for all."
The three jubilant kids rounded a corner … and stopped as frozen to the spot.
A big black car was parked at the curb. Casually leaned against it, arms crossed, was a horrifying black silhouette, a terrible fire burning in its eyes.
"I believe that is MY cake you've got in there!" Father said.
"Crud" Egbert breathed, as three ice-cream men seized them from behind, and threw them inside the back of the car with a fair degree of unnecessary roughness.