Danger Guys Hit the Beach (2 page)

“Anyway,” he said, “we're better off staying in the boat. We'll be spotted sooner.”

“No problem, pal,” I smiled. “We'll just sit here in the … Say, what is the name of this boat, anyway?” I looked over the side. “Oh-oh.”

“Oh-oh what?” Zeek read the name. “
Gilligan
? He named it the
Gilligan
? Oh, we're doomed. We'll be marooned here forever, eating tree bark and seaweed, while everybody else gets to go to the movies and eat cheeseburgers!”

“Hey, don't talk to me about burgers. I didn't get to eat mine, remember?”

“You can forget about lunch,” Zeek said. “The next meal we'll have will be breakfast. If we're lucky.”

“And don't start me thinking about—Hey, what's that?”

“What's what?”

“This water in the boat. Was it always here?”

“Water?
In
the boat? Man the lifeboat!”

“Zeek, this
is
the lifeboat. Man the surfboard!”

I tossed the board over, and we jumped on.

It was slippery. We were trying to sit up on it, when—

“
Rooaaarrr
!”

Out of nowhere rose this giant black … thing! It was all slimy. It had a long snout. Huge bulging eyes. Two snaky with claws on the ends of them.

“The Ugly Dude!”

The claws snapped open and shut.

They were snapping at us.

And they were getting closer.

“Paddle!” I yelled. “Fast!”

THREE

Zeek paddled with all his strength.

So did I.

Only we weren't paddling the same way.

So we didn't move.

But the sea monster did.

RRRRRRRR!
The snake arms shot out again from each side of the monster's belly. They kept grabbing for us.

“Zeekie! It's going to eat us!”

Then, as if we dreamed it—
whoosh
—the monster vanished beneath the water. The air was still. It was just Zeek and me on the surfboard.

“Noodle?” Zeek said. “Have we died and gone to surfer heaven? I mean, was there just a sea monster here? Or not?”

I looked all around. I was about to smile and give Zeek the thumbs-up, but I stopped.

Like they say, we were still in hot water.

Or at least, bubbling water.

The water began to churn all around us. It turned white and started to swell.

“Oh, no!” I cried. “The Golden Crest!”

Whoom!
We were lifted up on the crest of a giant wave. It must have been thirty feet high.

The surfboard teetered at the top like a seesaw. Then the wave curled and crashed.

Shoooooom!
Down we went. We hung on to the board as long as we could before it flipped over.

Wham!
The board slammed into a rock, bounced up, shot back over the wave, and landed in the motorboat. Then the boat rode the wave back toward the beach where we started.

“Hey! Maybe we should have stayed—”

Wham. Wham.
That's when Zeek and I hit the water. Hard.

It seemed like ten minutes before the wave threw us up on the island. And I mean
threw up
!
Yuck!
We were totally soaked and covered with slimy sea junk.

When we finally got to our feet, the wave was gone, and the sea was calm again.

“This is all too weird,” I said.

“Yeah,” Zeek said. “Like—
boom!
” He grinned and looked around. “Well, Nood, here we are, on your favorite little island. Now what?”

I scoped things out. The island was bigger than it looked at first. Beyond the beach it got pretty thick with bushes and trees. And there was a hill with a tall tree in the middle of it.

“Okay,” I said, pointing up to the top. “That's where we set up camp.”

“Camp? But we've got to be rescued soon. Shouldn't we stay on the beach?”

“No way, buddy. First, the next wave might be bigger. Second, we can signal from up there. And third, don't forget about the sea monster. Maybe it's a land monster too.”

Zeek didn't like that idea. “Okay, skipper,” he said, trying to smile. “Let's climb.”

We crossed the beach, pushed aside some branches, and walked inland. It was thick, like a jungle. And hot, too.

Big leaves flapped our faces. Long, stringy vines dangled from tall trees. We could hear these crazy, screechy birdcalls all around us.

“Can you believe it, Zeek?” I said, slapping a mosquito on my neck. “We could be a thousand miles from Mayville!”

“Yeah, trekking where no one has been before. I love it.”

We wound our way through the jungle to the top of the hill. I was starting to feel like my old self again.

“Listen, Zeek,” I said. “I've been thinking. Real waves don't just come from nowhere.”

“Yeah, and what about real sea monsters?”

“Them either. I don't know what that thing was, but mmrrrumf …”

Zeek suddenly put his hand over my mouth. “Shhh!” he whispered.

We crouched on the ground. I peered through the leaves.

“Look at that,” Zeek whispered. He pointed up ahead.

I followed his finger. “Zeek, it's called a tree. It's a pretty tall tree, but it's only a tree.”

“No, Noodle. I mean, that!” He pointed to the trunk of the tree about ten feet up from the ground. There was a plank nailed into the trunk. Two feet above that was another plank. And then another and another, all the way to the top.

“Tree house!” I yelled.

“Mega tree house!” Zeek yelled.

FOUR

“Awesome!” Zeek gasped as we scrambled up onto a platform in the tree house. “Just look at this setup. I could live here forever.”

It was cool, for sure.

We stood in a little room. In the middle was a table made from a small door. A hammock of leaves and vines hung in the corner.

“Nobody has lived here for a long time,” I said, looking around the room.

Zeek stepped over and swung himself onto the hammock.
Wump!
It collapsed on the floor.

“Hey, be careful. This stuff is way old. The whole place might fall apart with us in it.” I wiped a thick layer of gunk from the table.

“Let's explore the rest,” Zeek said.

A winding set of stairs ran around the tree up to another level. I tested the stairs. They wobbled a little, but we went up anyway.

We stepped out on an open deck. It had a seat and a shelf built into the tree.

“Cool. This could be your station, Noodle. It's even got a place to put your books.”

“Great, Zeek,” I said, looking over the side to the jungle way down below. “But let's think about making a signal now.”

“Yeah, in a minute. I bet the real exciting stuff goes on up there!” Zeek pointed up to the top level. It was twenty feet higher up the tree, and the only way to get there was a skinny rope ladder.

“Um … Zeek?” I gulped. “There's something I never really told you.”

“Yeah? What's that, buddy?”

“I don't like going too high. I keep thinking I'm going to fall. Sorry, I know it's pretty bad for a Danger Guy, but …”

“Hey, no problem,” Zeek said. “There are things I don't like. But that's why we're such a great team. Between us, we can do everything.”

Zeek smiled and slapped me on the back. “Come on, buddy, let's go up. I'll keep you safe.” The rope swung back and forth as we climbed. It made me kind of sick.

Finally we reached the top platform.

Then we saw it.

“Holy cow!” I gasped. “It's Mayville! You can see the entire coast from here!”

The view was unbelievable. Across the wide blue water was our town. The beach, the mall, everything.

“Right,” Zeek said. “And just look at this.”

He pointed to the roof over the platform. It was a piece of ship's sail tied to some branches with strips of vine. “A shade roof. Isn't this neat? I mean, who made this incredible tree house?”

We didn't have to look far for an answer. On the floor was an old wooden chest. There were some words carved on the outside. I brushed the carving with my hand.

“It says, ‘Captain John May, 1785.'”

“May? May!” Zeek looked at me. “You mean
May
, as in
Mayville
?”

“I can't believe it! He was shipwrecked, remember? Mr. Strunk told us that in class. He must have been marooned right here!”

“Cool! And he probably looked over there and said, ‘Someday they'll call that Mayville!'”

“Something like that,” I said. I went to open the chest.

“Wait a second, Noodle.” Zeek put his hand on the chest. “Maybe we shouldn't. I saw this movie once where they put a guy …”

“Look, it's a treasure chest, right? It's probably full of gold. It's got to be.”

“Or maybe it's full of bones. Maybe the guy who built this tree house is in there, all rotten.”

I didn't say anything. I just wiped away the dust and waited.

Then Zeek leaned over my shoulder. “Well, come on. Are you going to do it, or not?”

I smiled and opened the chest.

But then Zeek did it again. Clutzy thing number two.

He stuck his head right into the opening. He screamed. And he jumped back into me.

I tumbled backward. My arms went flying. I grabbed on to the roof branches to catch my balance.

Zeek grabbed on to me.

The vines holding the roof snapped.

The roof slid off.

And we went with it.

FIVE

“It was him! It was him! I saw him, the dead guy, in the box. It was horrible!”

Zeek didn't get it.

Not right away.

It took him a second. Then he went quiet.

And he looked down.

“Noodle?” he said quietly. “We're not in the tree house anymore, are we?”

Bingo! He finally got it.

But I didn't answer him. I was too busy trying to hold on to the tree house roof. Just why I was holding on to it, I didn't know. It made us fall even faster.

“We're falling, and we're going to die!” I screamed.

Suddenly, the sail in the roof puffed up with air. Hot ocean air. We stopped falling so fast. In fact, we stopped falling at all.

The sail caught a breeze and pulled us up. We soared around the tree and up to the left.

“Hey, we're hang gliding!” I cried.

“You're gliding, I'm hanging! Pull it up, Noodle!”

I looked down. Zeek was hugging my knees. His feet were kicking through the treetops as we drifted over them.

“Hey,” I called down to him. “You think I like this? I told you I don't like heights. We wouldn't even be here if you hadn't …”

Then he started to wiggle.

“Don't do that!” I cried.

“I can't
not
do it! I'll fall if I don't do it! Help! Noodle, I'm slipping!”

Zeek slid down to my ankles.

“Just don't grab my sneakers,” I yelled. “The laces aren't—whoa!”