Super Schnoz and the Booger Blaster Breakdown (11 page)

Four hours and two jars of cayenne pepper later, the European continent came into view.

“Land ho!” Jimmy shouted. “We made it!”

“We haven't made it anywhere,” I heard TJ say. “We still have a good fifteen hours of flying left before we land in Mongolia.”

“My sinuses need another blast of water!” I yelled from up above. “I feel a bloody nose coming on.”

Jean Paul grabbed the hose and fired a round of warm water into my dried mucous membranes. The relief was instantaneous. Without the water, the trip would not be possible.

“Thanks,” I said. “Now, toss me up one of those chocolate protein bars. I'm starving.”

Night fell as we passed over Paris. Below my feet, the Eiffel Tower looked like a bright Christmas tree. While Jean Paul entertained Vivian and the Not-Right Brothers with stories about his native city, I focused on the stars. The alien Apneans, who just a few months earlier had collected my snores to take over the world, were up there somewhere. I wondered if they had found another planet to take over. Or were they planning another invasion of Earth?

Hundreds of miles later, the lights of Europe's major cities gave way to utter blackness. TJ had calculated we were somewhere in the middle of Siberia. Exhaustion tugged at my flapping nostrils. I desperately wanted to land in some desolate patch of woods and rest, but every lost second meant the life of an endangered camel. I caught a gust of wind, inhaled more pepper, and kept sniffing along.

Finally, as I neared my nineteenth hour of continuous flying, we crossed over the Russian border into Mongolia. The gang let out a loud
whoop,
but the grueling trip had fried my nose so badly that I couldn't show any emotion. The first rays of morning sun peeked over the horizon. Below us, the Gobi Desert stretched as far as the eye could see. The landscape was harsh, barren, and completely void of life.

“Are you sure we didn't blow off course and land on Mars?” Jimmy joked.

“The Gobi is rocky with very sparse vegetation,” Jean Paul explained. “Unlike deserts we are all used to seeing, there are very few sand dunes. The harsh terrain discourages human habitation except for
rubuste
souls.”

“Like Sarantstral and her fellow desert dwellers?” Vivian asked.

Jean Paul nodded. “Yes. She came from very
résilient
stock. Also, the Gobi is known for
extrêmement
violent and unpredictable dust storms with very high wind …”

Before Jean Paul could finish his sentence, a huge, tornado-like dust cloud appeared out of nowhere. A blast of yellow sand blew directly in my face. Dirt and debris clogged my nose, causing my nostrils to deflate. The ropes over my shoulders that I used to carry the gondola twisted up like a kindergartner's shoestrings. The water tower tipped over, dumping gallons of water and nearly crushing TJ and Dr. Wackjöb under its weight. We then went into a deadly tailspin and plunged toward the desert floor.

“Throw me some pepper so I can keep us from crashing!” I yelled.

Mumps dove for the last jar of cayenne that was rolling around inside the gondola. Just as he wrapped his fingers around it, another fierce blast of wind whipped us sideways. The jar popped out of his hand and disappeared over the side.

“It's gone!” Mumps cried out. “We're going to die!”

I shoved two fingers deep inside my nose, desperately trying to scrape my nostrils free of sand so I could get some wind. It was useless. The more sand I picked from my snout, the more that came flying right back in.

Vivian, the Not-Right Brothers, Dr. Wackjöb, and Jean Paul grabbed hands, praying for their lives. I tilted my nose down, closed my eyes, and awaited impact.

CHAPTER 22

MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE

An image of Jimmy's black cat, Igor, flashed in my mind as I plummeted to the ground. One afternoon we were all hanging out inside the Nostril when Vivian noticed Igor on top of Jimmy's roof. The cat had climbed from an attic window to stalk a flock of pigeons roosting near the chimney. What happened next was the most amazing feat of aerial acrobatics I had ever seen.

A stray pigeon wandered within Igor's striking distance. The cat pounced from his hiding spot, but instead of getting the pigeon, he accidentally leaped off the rooftop. I remember watching in amazement as Igor twisted in midair like an Olympic diver until all four of his paws were squarely under his body. He landed with a
thump
in a patch of mulch. I thought for sure the cat was dead or badly hurt. But he just gave his body a quick shake and then trotted back inside the house.

If we were to survive this fall, I would have to perform the same daredevil act as Igor.

The cat had used his tail and flexible backbone to right himself. I, on the other hand, needed to use my bendy booger beak. Everyone has a tiny nasalis muscle whose sole function is to flare the nostrils. The difference between my nasalis and one of a normal person is like the Thing and a little old lady flexing biceps. There is no comparison.

I squeezed my nasalis muscle with all my might. Slowly, the mass of fleshy cartilage in the center of my face started wiggling. My mutated mucous monster jiggled faster. The dirt and sand clogging up my snot sewer began falling away. I was getting air! Just before we crashed, the external openings of my nasal cavity inflated like a stuntman's air bag. Vivian, the Not-Right Brothers, Dr. Wackjöb, and Jean Paul crashed on top of me, my bouncy nose breaking their fall.

“Is anyone hurt?” I asked, panting for breath.

“Owww!”
Mumps cried out in pain. “My ankle!”

The gang jumped off my muzzle and rushed to help Mumps.

“Careful,” Vivian warned. “He may have a broken bone.”

Dr. Wackjöb gently rolled up Mumps's pant leg. “It's bruising already,” he said. “Can you move it?”

Mumps gritted his teeth. After a moment, his foot moved a couple millimeters.

“If you can move it, then it's not broken,” Dr. Wackjöb said. “It looks to me like a very bad sprain. You just need some R-I-C-E.”

“I'm not hungry,” Mumps groaned, still obviously in pain.

“RICE is an acronym that means rest, ice, compression, elevation,” Vivian said. “My grampy's an emergency-room nurse.”

“Rest, compression, and elevation we can do,” Jimmy said. “But where do you expect to find ice? We just crashed in the middle of a dry desert!”

Everyone stopped what they were doing and gazed at the vast horizon. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but a foreign landscape of rocks, pebbles, boulders, and dirt.

“What do we do now?” I groaned. “We're out of food and water.”

“Plus, my laptop was completely destroyed in the fall,” TJ added, salvaging the computer's hard drive.

Jean Paul climbed a small, rocky hill and surveyed the surroundings. “This is the landscape of northern Mongolia,” he said. “If TJ's calculations were correct and we crossed over the border between Russia and Mongolia, then Ulaanbaatar is somewhere south of here. Schnoz, can you fly there to find us help?”

I lifted my nose in the air. Only a moment ago a wicked windstorm had been blowing dirt and sand everywhere. Now, the air was still without even the slightest breeze.

“Not without wind or cayenne pepper,” I said. “Until Mother Nature decides to whip up a gust, I walk like everyone else.”

Vivian tore a hunk of fabric from her jacket and wrapped Mumps's injured ankle. TJ and Jimmy helped him climb onto Dr. Wackjöb's back.

“Mumps cannot put any pressure on his ankle or it will never heal,” Dr. Wackjöb said. “I will take the first shift carrying him. Fortunately, my young friend is a pipsqueak and doesn't weigh much.”

Using the rising sun as our guide, we walked south toward Ulaanbaatar. By nine a.m., the air was already dry and hot. By the time noon rolled around, the temperature was scorching. We all huddled against a big boulder that offered a minuscule amount of shade.

“Water,” Vivian said. Her voice was weak and her lips chapped from sun exposure. “I'll give my kingdom for a glass of water.”

“That is from a Shakespeare play,” Dr. Wackjöb said and then lifted Mumps off his back.
“Richard III,
I believe. But the line is ‘My kingdom for a horse,' not water.”

“I'd rather have water right now instead of a horse,” I said, trying to shield my already sunburned nose.

Jean Paul abruptly stood up. “Look in the distance,” he said. “Do you see that kick-up of
poussière?”

I assumed that
poussière
meant dust, because that is exactly what I saw on the horizon. It wasn't huge like the dust storm that had crashed the gondola, but several small dust devils whirling like spinning tops.

“I hear hoofbeats!” Jimmy cried out. “They're horses!”

“You are correct,” Jean Paul said. “Men are riding them—at least a dozen—and they are coming this way!”

The only thing I could think of was Genghis Khan and the Mongol horde. Were these men going to rob us and leave us for dead in this forsaken desert? Before we had time to react, the horses had reached us.

The riders wore long, elaborately decorated robes with hoods that concealed their faces. Long swords, sharp knives, and bows with quivers dangled from their mounts. They shouted at us in a foreign language I assumed to be Mongolian.

The rider in front, obviously the leader, drew his sword, hopped off his horse, and approached us. I thrust out my nose, ready to defend my friends. The sudden appearance of my menacing honker took the man by surprise. He took a step back and yanked off the hood hiding his face. That's when I realized that he was really a
she.
The other riders yanked off their hoods as well.

They were all women!

CHAPTER 23

FLYING DRAGON NOSE

The woman standing before me looked slightly different from the others. She was young, with long, black hair and intense dark eyes, but her face was angular and not as round as the rest of the women. Under her robe, she wore what I assumed to be a traditional Mongolian outfit—except for her shoes. On her feet was a brand-new pair of red Converse sneakers, just like Jean Paul was wearing.

Jean Paul stepped forward and took one look at the woman, and his mouth dropped open in shock. “Sarantstral,” he blubbered. “Is it really you? You haven't changed one bit in trente years!”

The woman clutched her sword. “I was not even alive thirty years ago,” she said. “And why do you call me by my mother's name?”

Her perfect English and the fact that she knew the word
trente
meant “thirty” in French surprised me. The other women slid off their horses. They huddled around their leader with weapons drawn.

“I will ask you again,” she said. “How do you know my mother's name?”

Jean Paul stared at her deeply, his eyes carefully studying her face. As he reached out to touch her, the woman grabbed his arm and flung him to the ground like a wet towel. The other horsewomen rushed toward us, ready to fight if we made any sudden moves.

“He was in love with a Mongolian girl named Sarantstral a long time ago,” Vivian said, trying to diffuse the situation. “You must have reminded him of her. That's all. We've flown here from the United States and crashed in the desert. A very bad man wants to capture a bunch of wild Bactrian camels, and we need to stop him.”

A shocked expression washed over the woman's face. She turned to her fellow horsewomen, jabbered something in Mongolian, and then faced us.

“I don't believe you,” the woman said angrily “You are with the Frenchman and his foreign fighters. You have invaded our villages and forced our husbands and brothers to help you search for our sacred camels. You want them all!”

“We don't want to take camels,” I said. “We want to
save
them. The Frenchman you're talking about wants the camels to make an ingredient for his horrible perfume.”

“Just like when my mother was young, when foreigners invaded the desert to collect camel urine for shampoo.”

One of the horsewomen gave me a sinister look. She raised her sword in the air, seconds from be-nosing me, chopping my cookie detector right off my face. That's when Jean Paul struggled to his feet, reached into his pocket, and pulled out the fading photograph of Sarantstral wearing the purple tunic and Nike running shoes.

“Her name is Sarantstral,” Jean Paul said, handing the photo to the head horsewoman. “We once loved each other.”

The woman studied the photo, looked up at Jean Paul, and then stared back at the photo. “This is my mother as a young woman,” she said. “And you … you …” The words became stuck in her throat. She took a deep breath. “You must be Jean Paul … my father.”

Jean Paul and the woman collapsed into each other's arms, tears flowing down their cheeks.

“What is your name?” Jean Paul asked his newly discovered daughter.