Fear the Barfitron (14 page)

“Barf!” I cried out. “Their weakness is BARF!”

When we got up to the attic, the Director and Gordon were nowhere to be found. It was pure chaos up there—the old monsters were restless and scared. The Nurses were trying to calm them down, but were ending up with a lot of teeth marks on their beefy arms. I wondered why—with all of the biting—none of the Nurses had turned into vampires, zombies, or werewolves yet.

We handed the three stunned old vampires over to a Nurse, and then took a minute to brainstorm what we were going to tell the Director about Ben’s barf.

“We should just get to barfing!” said Shane. “And we should find out if the Nurses and the old monsters could work up some barf as well.”

“Do monsters barf?” asked Ben.

“Even if monsters barf, which I’m not sure they do,
we’ll never have enough barf!” I yelled. “There’s only so much lunch everyone can lose. Not everyone’s as good at it as Ben, and his massive spew only killed three of the sussuroblats.”

“Good point,” said Shane. “How can we get people to barf even more?”

We stood listening to all of the monsters howl, growl, and moan. I tried hard to think of all the barfy things that had happened to me in my life. Suddenly, it hit me.

“WAIT!” I yelled so loud that one of the banshees nearby let out a scream. “Parmesan cheese!”

“What?” Shane asked.

“Oh, right!” Ben said. “How could I forget! The same acid found in barf is also found in Parmesan cheese! Buh…byuh…”

“Butyric acid!” said Shane.

“YES!” all three of us yelled.

“We just need a whole bunch of Parmesan cheese!” I said.

“But how?” asked Ben. “How are we going to get enough Parmesan cheese? We don’t have time to go door-to-door asking for Parmesan-cheese donations. And there’s no way we’d be able to buy enough of the stuff. I remember my mother saying that it’s superexpensive. I’ve got, like, five bucks and a few pennies.”

“Let’s see…,” Shane said as he stared off into the distance.

“We’ll have to ask the Director for money,” I said, and ran over to a Nurse to see where the Director was.

“Busy!” said the Nurse.

“But this is important!” I said. “If I get money from the Director, a few hundred dollars, we might be able to fight the sussuroblats.”

“No money at Raven Hill,” said the Nurse. “Barter system. Donations.”

“What about the kitchen?” I asked. “Do you guys have Parmesan cheese in the pantry?”

“One canister,” said the Nurse.

He held one hand five inches above the other to indicate that the canister was quite small.

“That’s it?!” I screamed.

“Too expensive,” the Nurse said, and then started walking over to check on the elbow of the vampire that had fallen on the stairs earlier.

“Wait!” I yelled. “How long until the next sussuroblats arrive?”

“Sunset,” he said.

“How many?” I asked.

“Ninety or a hundred.”

As I walked back over to Ben and Shane, I knew what I had to do.

“I’m sorry, man,” Shane said, “but we got nothin’.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “We can use the money I was saving for my telescope.”

“What?!” both of my friends yelled at the same time.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Gordon’s way more important. If he hadn’t saved me, I would be the one turning into a cockroach. Now, we don’t have much time. Shane, find out when sunset is. Ben, you and I need to figure out where we’re going to find the most Parmesan for our buck.”

Fifteen minutes later, Ben, Shane, and I left my house with my five hundred and twenty dollars. Ben had come up with the genius idea to head to the local Italian restaurant, Mama Francesca’s, and see how much Parmesan cheese we could get for the amount of money we had. Shane was pulling his younger brother’s little red wagon behind him, and we all had our biggest backpacks, in the hope that we could fill everything up with cheese.

“We’ve got forty-five minutes left until sunset,” said Shane.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s just get as much as we can, and then we’ll figure out what to do with it. But start thinking.”

I wondered what could be done with the Parmesan, and I just couldn’t figure it out. Did we melt it and pour it over the side of the retirement home? Did we feed it to the ravens and have them poop on the roaches? It really did depend on how much we got, and how much time we had when we left the restaurant.

We walked up to Mama Francesca’s, which was
packed for dinner. There was a huge line coming out of the front door.

“We should just go in the back,” Shane said. “There has to be a door into the kitchen. You know, for deliveries. Deliveries of huge wheels of Parmesan cheese.”

We started to walk around back.

“It comes in wheels?” asked Ben.

“I don’t care which way it comes,” I said, “I just want as much of it as possible.”

“Cross your fingers,” said Shane. “We could get booted out of the kitchen before we can even ask.”

Less than five minutes later, my five hundred and twenty dollars had bought us admission to the walk-in refrigerator. We could walk out with as much Parmesan cheese as we could carry. Mama Francesca herself pointed over to an eight-foot-tall rack that was filled completely with Parmesan. Grated Parmesan. Chunks of Parmesan. Parmesan wheels. Our eyes bugged as we gazed upon what must have been the largest collection of Parmesan cheese in the universe.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s get as much as we can and get out of here!”

“Yeah, let’s get goin’,” said Ben. “It smells a little like…”

“BARF!” Shane and I said.

“Yep,” said Ben.

“Forty minutes!” yelled Shane.

Fifteen minutes later, Ben, Shane, and I headed up the road to Raven Hill Retirement Home. We were weighed down by our backpacks, which were completely full of cheese. We also had to move slowly so that the mountain of cheese on top of the red wagon didn’t crumble and spill over the sides.

“I don’t think I can make it,” wheezed Ben. “We should have called your mother, Chris!”

“We wouldn’t have had time for all the explaining,” I huffed.

“Carrying a hundred pounds of Parmesan cheese is a normal rite of passage for any middle-schooler,” said Shane. “I’m. Sure. She. Would. Have. Understood.”

Shane stopped, breathing heavy.

“Here, let me take the wagon,” I said to Shane. “It’s my turn.”

“Okay,” said Ben. “We’re almost there! How much time is left, Shane?”

“Twenty-five minutes!” Shane yelled.

“It’s going to take us five more minutes to get up the hill. What are we going to do in twenty minutes?” Ben asked.

“Well…,” I said.

“What?” asked Shane.

“Wait, I’m thinking!” I yelled back.

We crept up the side of the hill in silence for a minute, while I thought so hard that my brain hurt.

“I think the most important thing to do is to keep the roaches from coming inside the retirement home,” I finally said.

“Why?” asked Ben.

“Because once they’re inside, they can crawl around wherever they want—through cracks, up walls, even on ceilings. If we can keep them from getting inside, then we’d have a little more time to figure out how to defeat them.”

“Well,” said Shane, “why don’t we just lay down one big circle of cheese, all the way around the retirement home? They’d creep up to the house, but not be able to crawl up to the door or through any windows.”

“But we know a few of them came in through the crypt,” I said.

“That’s fine,” said Shane. “We just have to spread some cheese at the bottom of the stairs.”

“This just might work!” I yelled.

We got up to the top of the hill, and were greeted with the excited caws of the ravens. I cupped my hands around my mouth and screamed out a message that I knew the ravens would deliver to the Director.

“We’re back with Parmesan cheese! If we spread it around the retirement home and in the crypt, we should be able to keep the sussuroblats out. We have chunks of Parmesan cheese for each of the residents to hold for protection!!!”

Sure enough, one of the ravens flew away to deliver the message.

“Twenty minutes!” yelled Shane.

A shiver ran through my spine. Twenty minutes to sunset. The light was fading, and it was getting cold outside. I wondered if this crazy idea would even work. Whoever heard of Parmesan cheese defeating monsters?
Oh, well,
I thought,
Dracula hated garlic and giant cockroaches hate Parmesan cheese. I guess monsters just don’t like Italian food….

There was no time to think, or to be scared.

“All right!” I barked orders. “I’ve got the backpack of cheese chunks! I’ll head into the home and get the
Nurses to distribute them to the residents. You guys start laying a trail of Parmesan cheese around the building. It’s got to be deep enough to keep the roaches away, but I’ll still need enough to fill up a backpack for the crypt! HURRY!”

I ran into the retirement home and upstairs to the attic. The Director was waiting for me.

“How sure are you that this is going to work?” the Director asked. He looked completely scared—more scared than I was.

Terrified monsters huddled in small groups around the large, open attic. Gordon was nowhere to be found.

“Where’s Gordon?” I asked.

“I asked the first question,” said the Director.

“WHERE’S GORDON?!” I screamed. Grigore started crying again.

“He’s in a private room in the back of the attic, but—”

I didn’t even let the Director finish. I walked past him and handed him the bag of Parmesan chunks.

“Pass these out!” I ordered him.

I walked into the back of the attic, looking for a door.

“Mr. Taylor, I really don’t think you should see Gordon,” said the Director nervously.

I opened the door.

“MR. TAYLOR!” the Director yelled.

I walked inside. Gordon was slouched over in a chair in front of a small table. His back was toward the door, so
I ran up to him and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Gordon?” I asked.

Gordon slowly turned around, and that’s when I saw…

HIS MOUTH WAS NOW A COCKROACH MOUTH!

He looked up at me and his eyes filled with tears. He tried to talk, but his cockroach mouth just chattered and drooled a brown substance onto his karate uniform and mixed with the green snot stains from before. He smelled terrible.

“Gordon!” I yelled, and jumped back. I couldn’t help it. My friend looked absolutely disgusting!

From the door, the Director called for me one more time.

“Mr. Taylor,” he said, “I’m dreadfully sorry. The witches tried a few potions, but nothing worked. All we can do is keep him comfortable, and feed him garbage.”

At the sound of the word “garbage,” Gordon nodded his head enthusiastically and rubbed his stomach.

“I have to secure the crypt,” I said. “I’ll grab some garbage on my way back up.”

Gordon gave me a thumbs-up.

I walked with the Director back out of the room and toward the stairs.

“There should be enough Parmesan chunks in that backpack for every resident and Nurse,” I said. “I’ll be back.”

As the sun faded, everyone—monster and human alike—waited in the attic silently to see what would happen next. The residents clutched their chunks of Parmesan cheese as if they were the most precious things in the world. The Director paced continuously back and forth along the creaky attic floorboards. The Nurses tended to the residents that had been wounded in the last attack. Everyone looked upset and scared.