Scurvy Goonda by Chris McCoy Page B

some fledglings! Squawk! You’ll learn to love me!’
I
swear
to ya.”
    “Now you’re just wasting our time. Help me out, mate,” said the Hurler.
    The gag went back into Scurvy’s mouth.
    Scurvy felt the up-and-down motion of the camel underneath him. He examined the sand. He was destined for water, and this landscape was quite unnatural to him.
    Despite his predicament, Scurvy wondered where Ted was, how he was doing, how his first month of school had gone. Scurvy hoped he was happy. It used to break his heart watching Ted get beat up every day. Slicing open packages of bacon was one thing, but Scurvy knew that cutting off the head of a high school bully wasn’t allowed, as much as he might want to do it. Ab-coms couldn’t interfere to that degree. It was against the rules set by the founders of Middlemost thousands of years ago and still adhered to by all ab-coms.
    More than anything, Scurvy was angry at himself for not telling Ted things he should have told him much earlier. Like not telling Ted how important he was. He hoped that all the ab-coms hadn’t yet been called back from Earth, because if they had, terrible things were in store.

IV
    Ted was awakened at the crack of dawn by Vango, who was brushing his cheek with a horsehair paintbrush, a contented look on his face, murmuring something that sounded like “pretty as a picture,” though in the fog of half sleep, Ted couldn’t be entirely sure.
    “Good morning, sweet Theo,” said Vango. “Sweet like a macaroon!”
    “Time to leave!” said Dwack.
    Ted had slept fitfully, dreaming of the Crusher and claustrophobic tunnels. A nervous feeling washed over him.
    “I’ll stay here,” said Ted. “You go on ahead.”
    Dwack and Dr. Narwhal just looked at Ted while Vango removed a canvas painting from its easel and slipped it into a bag. Ted caught a glimpse of the picture, which appeared to be a portrait of him with his eyes closed. Had Vango been painting him while he was sleeping?
    “You don’t know anything about where you are,” Dwack said to Ted.
    “True. But where are you
going
?” said Ted.
    “We just have to keep moving because, technically, what we’re doing here is illegal,” said Dwack.
    “WOULD SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME WHAT IS GOING ON?” screamed Ted, his voice echoing above the forest.

V
    Ted had picked an unfortunate time to shout, for at the same time he was demanding to be told what was going on, one of President Skeleton’s hot-air surveillance balloons was floating high above. A three-eyed emu named Ewd, who was operating the balloon, heard his voice echoing all around her.
    “What the—” said Ewd, whose job was to search for ab-coms who, through either insanity or suicidal tendencies, had decided
not
to obey the presidential recall decree. The emu leaned over the side of her basket, batted her telescope into position using the side of her head, and peered through the eyehole, looking straight down at the forest below.
    A thousand feet below her, she caught glimpses of a narwhal shuffling ponderously across the forest floor, an artist cleaning his teeth with a paintbrush, and a vampire arguing with a teenage boy.
    The emu pressed the button on her talkie-talkie.
    “I’ve located four deserters,” said Ewd. “Request permission to blow them up.” The emu glanced at her bag of TNT, which she had been itching to use ever since she’d gotten her surveillance job.
    “What do the deserters look like?” came the static-drenched response.
    “Hmm … a narwhal, a vampire, an impressionist artist, and a teenage boy.”
    “Early
impressionist?” came the response.
    “Hard to tell from here,” said Ewd. “Maybe postimpressionist, but that’s just a gut feeling based on the way the guy is dressed, his palette, his choices of color.”
    The emu was proud of her art-history knowledge, having been the ab-com for a New York City child whose parents forced high-level cultural lessons on him as a toddler.
    “Anything strange