The Genius Files #4 (17 page)

“Texas!” Coke said. “
QBUXP
is Texas!”

“And
OXKDBO
is . . .,” Pep said as she tackled the rest of the letters one at a time, “
R-A-N-G-E-R
! Texas Ranger! That's a baseball team, right?”

“It's also a law enforcement agency,” Coke told her. “They investigate crime and stuff. But what does that have to do with the other clues we got—the piece of the Blarney Stone, or Hub City, or anything?”

“Beats me,” Pep admitted glumly. “Can't help you there.”

Dutifully, she wrote out the clues they had so far:

1. I WILL MEET YOU IN LLANO ESTACADO

2. A PIECE OF THE BLARNEY STONE

3. HUB CITY

4. TEXAS RANGER

The Ferrari approached the outskirts of Waco. The city is on the Brazos River and was first settled by the Huaco Indians. You would not call it a small town.
The population is over 124,000.

“Did you know that Dr Pepper was invented in Waco in 1885?” Mrs. McDonald reported from the front seat.

“Oh no,” Coke grumbled. “Please don't tell me there's a Dr Pepper Museum.”

“There's a Dr Pepper Museum,” his mother replied.

“I
told
you not to tell me that.”

“If we had a third child, we would have named her Pepper,” Dr. McDonald chimed in from the driver's seat.

“What if she was a boy?” Pep asked.

“We would have named
him
Pepper,” Dr. McDonald replied. “Boys can be called Pepper. There used to be a baseball player on the St. Louis Cardinals named Pepper Martin.”

Just northwest of the city, he pulled off the interstate and drove a few short miles until he reached a parking lot for something called the Waco Mammoth Site.

“What is
this
?” Pep asked.

“You'll find out,” Mrs. McDonald said, knowing full well that if she
told
the twins what it was, they would come up with every possible reason not to get out of the car.

The Waco Mammoth Site proved to be fascinating for everyone. In 1978, at this spot on the Bosque River,
two men stumbled upon a large bone sticking out of a ravine. It turned out to be part of the skeleton of a 68,000-year-old mammoth. Not only that, but fifteen other mammoths were scattered under the earth at the same location.

A lost world had been discovered. Soon, people started coming from all over to see the partly dug-up bones. The site was turned into a tourist attraction, complete with a scenic trail, a welcome center, and the inevitable gift shop.

While their parents waited in line for the guided tour, Coke and Pep scampered ahead onto the suspended walkway over the mammoth bones.

“Think of it,” Coke said as he leaned over the rail to peer at the tusks and bones below. “They all died right here, at the same time. They probably drowned in a flash flood or something.”

“It's kinda gross,” Pep said. “I mean, what if those bones were human bones?”

“They weren't humans,” her brother replied. “So it's not gross.”

Old people are forced to confront their mortality on a daily basis. Children, for the most part, don't have to.
Death is so far away. You have your whole lifetime ahead of you.

For children like Coke and Pepsi McDonald, however, it was a different story. In the past few weeks, they had been tortured with extreme cold, heat, noise, electricity, and fire. They had jumped off a cliff. They had been attacked with everything from motorcycles to bowling balls. And yet they were still alive.

“I wouldn't want to die like those mammoths,” Pep said solemnly as she looked down at the large bones.

At that moment, a trapdoor opened in the walkway and the twins tumbled into the darkness of the boneyard below.

“H
ow
would
you like to die?” asked a voice in the dark.

Pep went to scream, but a hand came up to cover her mouth before she got a sound out.

Coke struggled to his feet, only to be grabbed from behind by powerful arms.

“Shhhhhhhh!”
a voice said. “It's
us
.”

The twins turned around to see who had grabbed them.

“Bones!”

“Mya!”

The pair were dressed in tan uniforms with name
tags that said
ARCHAEOLOGIST
,
WACO MAMMOTH SITE
.

“What are
you
doing here?” the twins asked simultaneously.

“We needed to speak with you,” Mya told them.

“We have reason to believe that your lives are in danger once again,” said Bones.

“Gee, ya
think
?” Coke said sarcastically. “Yesterday somebody dropped a dead cow on my head. And then I was attacked with motorcycles and bowling balls.”

“Who's after us
now
?” Pep asked.

“I'm sorry to say it's Dr. Warsaw again,” Bones replied.

“That's impossible,” Coke said. “We saw him in Hot Springs. He was a wreck. He tried to kill us in the vapor cabinets, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He had some kind of a mental breakdown right in front of us.”

“It's not Dr. Warsaw
himself
that we're worried about,” Mya said. “We think he may have created a clone.”

“What?!?” Coke said. “How is that possible? I thought human cloning was
years
away.”

“It
was
years away,” Bones told him. “But that was years ago when they said it was years away. Now those years have passed. It's now. And it's possible.”

“You mean to say that now there are
two
Dr. Warsaws?” asked Pep.

“We don't have proof,” Mya said, “only our suspicions. We've heard rumors.”

Coke kicked at the dirt, nearly breaking his foot on a mammoth tusk.

“Well, this is just
great
,” he said disgustedly. “That
doubles
the chances that he's going to get us.”

Pep could see her brother's emotions were getting the best of him. That wasn't a good thing. He would be useless in an emergency if he couldn't control himself.

“We've been getting these secret messages,” Pep said, trying to change the subject. “Hub City . . . Texas Ranger . . . a piece of the Blarney Stone. Do you know who is sending them?”

“No,” Mya said. “But I'll look into it.”

“Are you two good for
anything
?” Coke spat. “All you ever do is sneak around with your funny disguises and pop up out of nowhere to scare the crap out of us. Then you bring us bad news. You never help us.”

Bones took a step back. He wasn't used to being talked to that way.

“Coke, stop,” Pep said.

“Need I remind you that
we
were the ones who saved your lives when you had to jump off the cliff in California?” Bones said calmly. “And we spent our annual budget to get you a Frisbee grenade, which you threw into a swimming pool.”

“My sister used it to knock the gun out of Evil Elvis's hand!” Coke said. “It
ricocheted
into the swimming pool!”

Coke was furious. It looked as though he was going to throw a punch at Bones, but Mya stepped between them.

“Let's not argue, guys,” she said. “We're sincerely trying to help you. Here, I brought you a little present.”

She took something out of her pocket and handed it to Coke. It was a refrigerator magnet in the shape of Texas. He looked at it carefully.

“Is it a camera?” he asked. “Where's the lens?”

“It's not a camera,” Mya said. “You put it on your refrigerator.”

“And it explodes?” Coke asked hopefully. “Why would I want to blow up a refrigerator?”

“It doesn't explode,” Mya told him.

“Then how will it save my life?” Coke asked.

“It won't save your life,” Mya explained. “It will make your refrigerator look nice.”

Coke shook his head and gave the magnet to Pep so she could add it to her collection.

“Just leave us alone, okay?” he said to Mya and Bones. “We don't need your help anymore.”

“W
hat's eating
you
?” Dr. McDonald asked as Coke climbed into the car with a scowl on his face.

“Nothin'.”

“Didn't you kids find those mammoths to be fascinating?” their mother asked. “I got a lot of material for
Amazing but True
.”

Coke and Pep grunted. Their parents glanced at each other and rolled their eyes.

Teenagers. Who can figure 'em out?

“Well, I think you're
really
going to like our next
stop,” Mrs. McDonald said optimistically.

They had lunch at a Waco restaurant called Buzzard Billy's, and then drove a few miles to the south side of town, the industrial district of Waco. Dr. McDonald pulled up to a huge, boxy building with an empty parking lot. A sign on the side of the building said . . .

Coke and Pep were instantly intrigued. Chocolate cures all ills.

“Mars?” Pep asked. “You mean like the candy bars?”

“The company makes Skittles, Starburst, Milky Way, and Snickers here,” her mother replied, leafing through her guidebook. “In fact, it says that if you're eating a Snickers bar anywhere in North America, there's a ninety-six percent chance that it was made right here at this factory.”

“Wow,” Coke said. “This is gonna be cool!”

“Why do you think the parking lot is empty?” asked Dr. McDonald.

“I guess we're a little early for the tour,” Pep said.

As they stepped out of the car, they could smell the chocolate—a
wonderful
smell.

Coke pulled on the front door of the building, but it was locked. A small sign stated the obvious—
CLOSED
.

“Closed?!” Mrs. McDonald took out her cell phone and dialed the number in her guidebook. After wading through several frustrating layers of computerized options, she finally punched in
0
and got a human being at the other end of the line.

“We're standing at the front door of your factory, and it's locked,” she explained politely. “We're here to take the two o'clock tour.”

“I'm terribly sorry, ma'am,”
said the voice at the other end of the line,
“but we don't have a tour.”

“It says on the internet that you have a guided tour every day of the week at ten, noon, two, and four o'clock,” Mrs. McDonald said, her voice rising.

“Calm down, Bridge,” said Dr. McDonald.

“That must be a mistake, ma'am,”
said the voice.
“There is no tour. And the factory is closed today, anyway.”

Now she was mad.

“What do you mean, it's
closed
?” Mrs. McDonald shouted. “We drove all the way across the country to come here. My kids were so excited. They've been
sitting in the car for five hours.”

“We have not, Mom,” Pep whispered.

“Shhhhhh!”

“I'm sorry, ma'am—”

“Do you have any idea who I am?” Mrs. McDonald shouted into the phone.

“No ma'am, I don't.”

“I am the creator of
Amazing but True
, one of the most popular reference sites on the web.
ABT
gets over a million hits each month. My readers are not going to be happy when I tell them about this. You don't want a boycott on your hands.”

“Bridge, let it go,” Dr. McDonald said.

“I'm sure your website is very influential,”
the voice on the phone said,
“but we simply don't offer a tour. We never did.”

“Let me ask you a question,” Mrs. McDonald said, trying to remain calm. “What if the president of the United States came here today and asked for a tour of the factory? Do you think you might find a way to open up and show him around?”