The Viper's Nest Read online

  “She can’t,” Amy replied. “She’s past the exit —”

  “Not yet!”

  Nellie yanked the steering wheel right. The Yugo tilted sharply, its left wheels lifting off the ground as it veered onto the grassy shoulder.

  The car bounced, its front bumper crunching down repeatedly on the rock-hard dirt. Its rear wheels began sliding side to side, kicking up dust clouds. Inches away, the road dropped off sharply into a steep ditch.

  “Hang on!” Nellie cried out.

  “We’re going to die!” Amy shouted.

  She closed her eyes as the car sailed into the air.

  Dan had no idea that dying felt so bad on the tongue.

  “OWWWW … ow-ow-ow-ow-ow!” he screamed, blood trickling over his bottom lip.

  His eyes opened. The Yugo was in the ditch, slanted to the right. Nellie gunned it forward, her left tires just gripping the ditch’s upper ridge. “HANG ON!”

  With a loud bump, the car lifted upward onto the lip of a downhill exit ramp. It swerved, straightened, and picked up speed.

  Dan sucked back the blood from his bitten tongue, which was beginning to swell. He watched the dust settle around them. Nellie had managed to backtrack to the exit ramp she’d passed, and they were headed into a bleak-looking area just short of the city skyline.

  How did she learn to drive like that?

  “You did it!” Amy cried out. “You got away!”

  “Why did oo haf thoo do that?” Dan said, his tongue thick and throbbing. “I bit my thongue!”

  Nellie was staring angrily forward, leaning on her horn. “Hey, who taught you idiots how to drive?”

  There was a car headed directly toward them.

  “The left side of the road, Nellie!” Amy shouted. “They drive on the left!”

  “Oh, right. Brain fart.”

  Nellie adjusted into the left lane and gunned it. She zoomed through an intersection, not stopping for any of the cars. Hugging the left side of the road, Nellie sped past whitewashed buildings and chicken-wire fences, past women balancing buckets on their heads and men three-to-a-seat on motorcycles.

  A screech of tires made Dan spin around. Through the rear window he spotted the Hummer stuck in the intersection, surrounded by honking motorists.

  Nellie pushed the Yugo to its limits. The town was small, and the four-lane road soon narrowed to two. Outside the town, the countryside was flat and green, with distant outcroppings resembling enormous stone fists. Cattle grazed in pastures, and the land was dotted with tin shacks and wood huts.

  “We really lost them,” Amy said.

  But Dan had his eye on the back window. A faint hum grew louder, like an approaching plane.

  And then, through the dust, a wide black silhouette purred its way up the street.

  Dan’s tongue felt like a wad of paper towel. “Hummuh!” he said. “HUMMUH!”

  As Nellie sped over a hill, a flock of goats ambled across the road. The goatherd was a craggy old man singing to himself and beating the ground rhythmically with a staff. Seeing the car, the goats lifted their heads as if to say, Sorry, WE were here first.

  “YO, GET OUT OF THE WAY!” Nellie screamed.

  “They’re goats!” Amy said. “They don’t understand English!”

  “NO-O-O-O-O-O!” Dan shouted.

  Nellie slammed on the brakes. The Yugo arced to the left, onto the parched plain. Dan listened for the sound of goat massacre but heard only the crunching of rock underneath them.

  Then, from behind them, a hollow, unearthly EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE …

  Dan opened his eyes. The Yugo was careening across open ground. Goatless.

  The smell of burning rubber reached him from behind. He turned to look out the back window.

  The goats were thick in the road now, still chewing, still bleating, still alive and safe. The Hummer had narrowly missed the flock and disappeared headfirst into a chicken coop. A cloud of white feathers plumed up around it, and some very angry birds were expressing their disapproval.

  A farmer drove up to them in a purple-painted pickup and hopped out, yelling.

  Dan sat back and let out a sigh of relief. He rubbed his tongue against his lips, trying to stop the pain, as Nellie aimed the car back onto the highway.

  When Dan’s eyes opened from a nap, the Yugo was parked under a tree at the top of a hill. Below them was a field where a group of men played soccer.

  He pressed his tongue against the top of his mouth. The tip was still sore, but the swelling had gone down. “Owwww …”

  “Where are we?” Amy said groggily.

  “Lunch stop,” Nellie said. “Just outside Pretoria. There’s a food shop up the road. I figure we’ll hide the car here in case our friends come looking for us.”

  “Um, guys?” Dan said, looking past Amy. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Amy whirled around. A hulking purple pickup truck trailing white feathers was lumbering up the road toward them.

  “Why would that be here?” Amy said. “It belongs to the farmer whose chicken coop the Hummer destroyed.”

  “Unless the Hummer dudes hijacked it!” Dan said.

  “Come on!” Nellie hopped in the Yugo and turned the ignition key. The car sputtered and wheezed. She tried again and it died.

  “Run!” Amy said.

  They sprinted down toward the soccer field. The players stopped, staring at them in bafflement. Beyond the field, the hill swept upward into a dense thicket of trees. It would be easy to get lost there.

  Amy climbed, keeping right behind Nellie. But when they reached the top, Dan wasn’t with them.

  “What the —?” Nellie said.

  Dan was talking to one of the soccer players, gesturing back toward the pickup. The man was nodding intently as other players gathered around them.

  “Dan!” Amy started to call out, but Nellie put her hand over her mouth.

  In a moment, Dan was scooting up the hill. “Move!” he said. “We need to hide!”

  “What were you doing?” Amy hissed.

  “Run now, chat later.” Dan scampered past them into the woods, finding a path that followed along the ridge. When the soccer field came in sight again, he ducked behind a thick bush. “We’ll wait,” he said. “If everything goes right, there will be a huge fight down there. We’ll circle back to the car and try again.”

  Amy and Nellie knelt on either side of him. On the field, the soccer team had closed around five people dressed in elaborate, colorful African robes and odd feathered hats. One guy, who appeared to be captain of the players, was gesturing heatedly.

  In a moment, Amy and Dan’s pursuers were shedding their robes. The burliest one was the first to remove his hat.

  The bristling, brush-cut scalp of Eisenhower Holt was instantly recognizable. As was the slavering pit bull that was bounding around the sidelines.

  “The Holts?” Dan said.

  Amy grabbed Dan’s arm. “Those were the clothes they were wearing when I saw them crouched down in the Hummer. It’s their idea of a disguise. What did you tell the players?”

  “The truth, sort of,” Dan replied. “That the people in the truck were a gang of bad guys chasing after innocent kids. Now, come on, let’s get ready to move.”

  Amy glanced to her left, following the path they would need to take to the car. For at least fifty yards, they would be totally exposed.

  Below, Eisenhower was shouting at one of the players. Pushing him. But Hamilton was on the sidelines, combing his hair in a hand mirror. Preening.

  The sun’s reflection glinted from Ham’s mirror. Dan recoiled, shielding his face with his hand. “The jerk.”

  The glare landed on Nellie. “Ow! Oh, thanks a lot. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Wait,” Amy said. “I think he’s aiming it.”

  Dan became rigid. “Whoa. Hold still, Nellie. He’s sending a message!”

  “A what?” Nellie said.

  “Dit-dit-dit, dah-dah-dah, dit-dit-dit,” Dan muttered.
r />   “The standard Morse code distress signal. Hamilton is sending Morse code! This is, like, so World War Two!”

  He took his Shaka card from his pocket and gave it to Amy. “Hold this up. Try to catch the mirror message as best you can. I’ll write down the letters.”

  “You know Morse code?” Nellie said.

  “Duh,” Dan replied.

  By the time Dan got out a pencil and candy wrapper, the flares had stopped. But they began again as Amy held up the card.

  Dan whispered as he wrote: “Dah-dah-dit … dah-dah-dah … dah-dit … dah-dah-dah … dit-dah-dah … dah-dit-dit-dit … dit … dit-dah-dah … dit-dah … dit-dah-dit … dit …”

  Hamilton abruptly put his mirror in his pocket and ran onto the field. The African players were teasing him in a mixture of English and some other language.

  “What’s it say?” Amy asked.

  Dan showed what he’d written:

  Dan read the letters. “ ‘Gon ow be ware’?” he said.

  “Um, I’m just a stupid au pair,” Nellie said, “but wouldn’t that be, Go now. Beware?”

  RRRROMMMMMM … CHCK! CHCK-CHCK-CHCK.

  Amy looked up at the sound.

  At the top of the ridge, about twenty yards farther in and well out of sight of the clearing, the yellow Yugo had pulled to a ragged stop in a clearing. The driver’s window was begrimed with dirt.

  A shiny two-tone dress shoe emerged from the car first, planting itself on the ground, followed by a pair of cream-colored linen pants.

  “Greetings, my beloved niece and nephew,” said Alistair Oh.

  “You’re … here!” said Amy. “How did you escape?”

  “How did you find us?” Dan asked.

  “How did you start the car?” said Nellie.

  “All will be explained in the fullness of time, my dears.” Alistair gestured urgently toward the door. “I suggest we enter the chariot and ride away from our well-muscled nemeses.”

  “I’ll drive!” Nellie raced around to the driver’s side.

  “Let me,” Alistair said, blocking her way.

  Amy stepped forward, then stopped in her tracks.

  Go now. Beware. That was the warning.

  Hamilton doesn’t mean “beware the Holts,” she thought. He means “beware Alistair.”

  “No, Nellie!” Amy shouted. “Don’t get in there.”

  Amy fixed Uncle Alistair in her vision. He was cocking his head to one side, his yellow silk scarf gently wrinkling with the motion.

  “Where do you go when you leave us?” Amy asked.

  “Amy …?” Alistair said, wiping his forehead with a white handkerchief.

  Amy took a deep breath and counted to three. It was a technique Mom had taught her. Sometimes that was all it took to check your heart against your brain. “Think about this, Dan. We open our hearts to him every time. He swoops in to save us. We give him whatever we find. Then he vanishes. What does he do with the information? And how did he and the Holts find us at the same time — in the middle of South Africa?”

  Dan looked uncomfortably at Uncle Alistair. Nellie retreated from the car door.

  “If you must know,” Alistair said, looking nervously down the hill, “I was held in Indonesia under false pretenses, but I escaped. I gambled on the notion that you were marching to Pretoria, as it were, but most international flights come in to Johannesburg. I was able to convince some airline personnel to reveal flight lists to me. It took detective work among the rental-car people to find which car you took, but we Ekats are good at that. I hired a driver to head for Pretoria. That was when I saw the Hummer, which made me suspicious.”

  “And you followed it …” Amy said.

  “Precisely,” Alistair replied. “Now may we go?”

  “Wait,” Dan said. “How did the Holts find us?”

  “We can talk inside the car!” Alistair said.

  “You’re a smart guy,” Amy said. “You heard Nellie sing the song and boom! You knew the hint. You’re light-years ahead of anyone. And you’re telling us that the Holts figured all of this out without your help?”

  Alistair cocked his head curiously. “Are you suggesting I am in an alliance with the Holts? I can’t even carry on a conversation with them!”

  “Come on, troops,” Nellie said, reaching for the car door. “Let’s leave Old Burrito Man here with the Frankenstein family. Maybe when they find out their plan failed, they’ll use him as a soccer ball.”

  Nellie was in the car now. She turned the engine over once … twice … three times, and it finally started.

  “You’re not going to leave me here, are you?” Alistair was looking at Amy now. His face registered shock, panic. It was an expression she recognized from the fire two nights before.

  He was willing to save our lives. He was about to jump off a ledge for us, until Irina arrived.

  But she also knew the look from another time. From seven years ago. When he had come to their house to steal a poem. A poem with a Clue hidden in it. A poem that Hope Cahill and Arthur Trent thought would solve the riddle of the 39 Clues.

  We only want what is ours.

  Someone had said that during the night. She’d heard the voice from the study, just after the commotion had wakened her.

  Alistair’s voice.

  Alistair hadn’t set the fire. But he could have said something. He could have prevented …

  “Amy …?” Alistair said. “Are you all right, dear?”

  Amy looked him in the eye. “Why did you keep it from them — the fact that you’d stolen the poem?”

  “I — this is hardly the time —” Alistair stammered.

  “You could have told them,” Amy said. “You could have shouted, ‘I have the poem!’ She was running into a fire, Uncle Alistair!”

  “I was contending with so many people,” Alistair said. “I could barely see straight. Eisenhower Holt had some cockamamie idea that we could use the neighbors’ garden hose —”

  “Eisenhower Holt was there, too?” Amy said.

  “And his wife, Mary-Todd,” Alistair said.

  Dan’s face was red. “How many people were there — just standing around, doing nothing to help them?”

  Eisenhower.

  Yes, Amy saw him now in her memory of the night. A gruff man with a red face and bristles for hair.

  They were all in it together. United. They may not all have set the fire, but without them it wouldn’t have happened.

  They were killers, all of them.

  Tears rushed to her eyes, but Amy kept them back. Without thinking, she grabbed Uncle Alistair’s silk scarf and pulled him toward her. “I don’t care if you’re working with them or not,” she said. “Either way, when they find you, they will make your life miserable.”

  She let go and jumped into the backseat next to Dan. Nellie gunned the engine.

  “Wait—you can’t —” Alistair sputtered, struggling with something at the top of his cane.

  “Oh?” Nellie said, stepping on the gas. “Watch me.”

  Alistair Oh staggered away from the cloud of exhaust and dust. He had never seen the girl so angry.

  Dealing with the children was going to be nearly impossible now.

  You knew to expect this, old boy, he told himself. They are Grace’s grandchildren.

  They were smart. Too smart. They had read him almost perfectly. If only they hadn’t misread his motives.

  The Holts, as usual, had ruined everything. Goodness knows how those blockheads had picked up the trail in South Africa! Or how they had managed to ambush him at the airport. The ride in the Hummer and the chicken truck had been grueling, but it hadn’t compared with the humiliation of being their decoy.

  They’re scared of us, Alistair, but not of you, Mary-Todd had said. We’ll advance slowly and scare them. You sweep behind and drive them to us.

  Or die, Eisenhower had added.

  Alistair dusted himself off and lifted his cane. None of them remembered that Oh Enterprises had been a pr
oud NASCAR sponsor. None of them knew how Alistair Oh could handle even the lowliest automobile.

  He glanced down the hill. The argument still raged. Soon it would be over, and the Holts would be after him. He would have to flee on foot while he had a chance.

  Turning toward the road, he noticed a glint of silver in the dust—a cell phone. Most likely dead, but perhaps the aftermath of some recent picnic. If it worked, he could use it to call a car service.

  Picking it up, he noticed a text message notification. He pressed READ.

  SBS! M347.

  How sad that people no longer communicated in real words. By now he had mastered “omg,” “osm,” “imho,” “lol,” “ttfn,” and “rofl” — but not “sbs.” Such Boffo Shenanigans perhaps. Sis Boom Shazam? Super Bowl Sunday. He winced as he remembered Sushi Burrito Special, a notorious product line that led to his company’s demise. He’d been so obsessed with the hunt for the 39 Clues that he’d neglected to oversee the proper storage, resulting in the illness of thirteen people. And bankruptcy.

  He clicked through the various menus, trying to find some sort of ID. But it was fruitless. Finally, holding the phone to his ear, he tapped out the number for information.

  Static. Broken sound.

  He tossed the phone back onto the ground and carefully placed his fallen bowler back on his head.

  Thwock.

  A soccer ball knocked it off again.

  “Freeze,” came a rough voice from behind him. “Hands in the air and about-face — harch!”

  Alistair tried not to shake as he turned.

  “I hope,” Eisenhower Holt said, “you play good defense.”

  Dan wondered how Shaka Zulu would handle a ride in a busted Yugo with two females arguing over hotel accommodations.

  “You’re the one who worries about money,” Amy said. “A tent is perfect. We’d use it every day.”

  “I need a mirror, clean sheets, and those little paper-wrapped soaps,” Nellie said. “I collect them. If you use them at home they remind you of where you’ve been—”

  “This search is not about comfort,” Amy said. “You’re being like the Kabras and Alistair — pampered and fussy. First it’s the secrets, and now it’s —”