Chapter 36. Fred Chickweed Delivers Some Pizzas
As Fred Chickweed neared the high school, he saw people of all stripes amassing on its great lawn. What was going on here? The citizens of town must be wise to the presence of the trolls, he thought, to congregate so publically. Before he was seen, he left the sidewalk and hid behind a corner of the school. From that vantage point, he peered out at the crowd.
Fred didn’t like what he saw. Most of the people were congregating around a person that Fred quickly recognized as Mayor King. They appeared angry. It looked to Fred like they were shouting questions at their leader, and that he wasn’t providing the answers they were seeking.
Fred experienced a moment of empathy. He knew what it was like to have unhappy people gang up on you.He also knew, however, that the mayor often insulated himself from such meetings. Once, he himself had shown up in Mayor King’s office. He had been ready to announce himself, to assure Mayor King that he was on the job, a chicken in charge. But he hadn’t even been able to see the mayor; the mayor’s secretary was as far as he had gotten.
It was just as well. Had Mayor King welcomed him as he had hoped, he would now be disappointed in Ferdy Chicken. Disappointed at best. At worst, he would know who was personally to blame for the fiasco of the night before. A real threat had arrived in Lone Tree, and Ferdy Chicken had done nothing.
Just last night, Ferdy had visited Mayor King’s house. That had given him an opportunity to meet the mayor without the intercession of his secretary, but even then he hadn’t followed through. He had stood on the mayor’s front porch for a full minute, considering the act of ringing his doorbell and delivering his news of the monsters. He had thought that it would be grand to introduce himself, finally, to the mayor. To announce himself as Ferdy Chicken, ON THE CASE.
Mayor King, he knew, might not have believed him right at that moment, but afterwards, when the monsters had been rounded up and no one but Ferdy was there to take credit for the job, the mayor surely would want to shake his hand and give him the keys to the city and…well, maybe offer him a job as chief superhero in charge of Maebiewahnapoopie Monsters and Other Threats to the Peace. Buy him a car. Provide him with all the superhero equipment he could think to ask for.
Fred shook his head. Even last night, experiencing the thrill of discovery of the monsters, and in thrall to his supposed role in the world, he hadn’t been brave enough to ring Mayor King’s doorbell. Instead, he had taken the note out of his boot and poked it into the screen door.
Now, standing against the brick wall of the school and peering out at the throng of disgruntled citizens, he was glad he had not rang that doorbell. He was glad that had chickened out. It was a lesson he would remember. If ever in the future he thought himself capable, he would remember this moment.
Better not to announce oneself, eh? Better to remain in the shadows. That way, when you failed, no one would know it was you. No one would point and hoot. No one would speak your name as they recited the town’s annals of infamy.
No, Fred would know better next time. Next time, there would be no public announcements. Not that there had been any public announcements this time. But it had been a close thing. His forefinger had been within an inch of buzzing Mayor King’s doorbell. Within an inch, and within seconds.
Fred peered further around the corner of the school. Yes, there were his pants, still in a loose heap on the sidewalk. Hopefully, his wallet would still be in the back pocket of those pants. All these people on the lawn of the high school presented a problem, though. If he was going to be claiming his wallet, he didn’t want a bunch of people seeing him. Should he just return to his pizza delivery? But though that thought held a sort of temptation, he dismissed it. He really needed to get his wallet before someone else did. Also, if he managed to get a pencil from Principal Klieglight, he could mark these boxes and be done with it. Both plans, though, required that he get to the front door of the school. He would be exposed.
Suddenly, the image of Principal Klieglight peering out the front door of the school the night before came to him. He held a haunted appearance, that man, which Fred recognized. With a bolt of inspiration, Fred realized that Principal Klieglight would be just as uncomfortable with this group of citizens on the school grounds as he was. The fact of their presence would be something, like a fear of cameras, that united the two. It would be nice, he thought, to talk with Principal Klieglight about the various discomforts of living in the modern age: cameras, mobs of citizens on your front lawn, delivering pizzas to grumpy, self-righteous people.
The thought gave him the goad he needed to duck as low as possible—not easy, carrying half a dozen pizzas—and head for the door.
Things were really piling up on Mayor King. First, he had been accosted unexpectedly by a reporter. Then, his wife had spoken out of turn, on camera. Worse, she had then passed out at the sight of the monsters. That left him with too many conflicting responsibilities: he had to hold Boopsie, he had to try to rouse his wife, and now the town’s citizens were demanding that he do something about these monsters.
“Do what?” he asked them from a position crouched next to his wife’s still form. “Just what exactly do you think I should do?”
The citizens of Lone Tree didn’t know what he should do either, but they certainly expected more out of their leader than to be as helpless as they were.
Fred wasn’t all the way to the door before someone noticed him. It was a short man at the edge of the crowd.
“Look!” he shouted, pointing at Fred. The mob did look. Fred returned their look with wide eyes. He had been caught. And then, Fred saw that there was a cameraman on the lawn. Now, everyone in town would know that he was still trying to deliver last night’s pizzas. Whatever story he might have banged together to explain these pizzas had now been shot down by one too many prying cameras. Surely, the footage of him, without his pants and still carrying these pizzas, would make its way to his boss.
Fred didn’t know what to do but keep going. He was nearing his pants. His first thought was to pick them up off the sidewalk as he walked by. If he was smooth about it, perhaps no one would notice. But then, the camera returned to his mind. If people watched the footage over and over on the news, surely they would be analyzing every detail. Better, he thought, to pretend that they weren’t his pants. If someone asked, he could look around him and say, “Pants? What pants?” Or he could comment, with a casual disregard upon seeing a pair of grown men’s pants on stoop of a public building, “Not my pants, not mine, nosirree not my pants.” Perhaps no one would relate this pair of blue jeans—a pair of blue jeans sized to a rather short and somewhat stocky man— with the rather short and stocky man who stood there with no pants on. Instead of grabbing his jeans, he fished out his wallet— thankfully, it remained it the hip pocket—and moved on. He laid his wallet on top of his load of pizza boxes. With only a few more steps, he was at the school doors.
Mercifully, they were unlocked.
Mr. Klieglight cowered under his desk. Cowered, that is, under what had once been his desk. Now, it was the desk of whoever the high school principal might be: not him. The monsters were banging on his office door. Well, banging on what had once been his office door. It shuddered on its hinges with every hit. At any moment, he was sure, the door would give way, and he would be at the mercy of the monsters.
“Help!” he yelled pathetically. “Help!”
But he knew no one would hear him. He was alone in the school. Ordinarily, at least a few diehard students would be in the school, even on a day as exciting and drama-filled as this one. But, alas, it was Saturday. Saturday! Even Ms. Blandishment didn’t work on Saturday.
It was hopeless.
But then, suddenly, the noise of the monsters trying to break into his office ceased. Had they given up? Were they looking for another way to get at him? Were they even now plotting against him, trying to manipulate him into leaving his office and walking into their trap?
Maybe. But he wasn’t going to fall for it. No sir. He wasn’t leaving his office for anything. He was gonna sit right here under his desk.
He let out another yell for help. He expanded his lungs as much as he could in the cramped position under the desk, and yelled again.
Fred Chickweed heard the yell for help. He knew immediately that it was Principal Klieglight. But he also knew that he could do nothing for him. The man was lost, a victim to these monsters. And that was true because he, Fred Chickweed, was lost as well.
He had entered the school, thinking it a safe haven from the mass of people outside. But as soon as he had entered the foyer, he knew that this was no haven. Instead, it was full of the monsters. They had been pummeling Principal Klieglight’s office door, and now they were going to pummel him. First one monster had broken off the attack on the door, then a few more, then all of them. As each one turned, it stared at him. As each one stared, it sniffed at him. Fred seemed to be very attractive to these monsters.
Fred pondered that little fact. These monsters, from the look of them, were carnivores. And he, he knew, was meat.
They had wanted to eat Principal Klieglight, and now they wanted to eat him.
As he stood staring back at those dozen pairs of eyes, he knew that he was a goner. They’d get Principal Klieglight eventually, he knew, but for right now, Principal Klieglight was behind a locked door, and he was not.
The monsters took a step closer to him and sniffed again. They took another step. Still, they sniffed. They took a third step.
Fred Chickweed was in no way prepared to fight these monsters. He didn’t have Ferdy Chicken’s tools of the trade. He also didn’t have Ferdy Chicken’s chutzpah, his crazed ego, his willingness to engage evil in any form. He wasn’t Ferdy Chicken, he was just Fred Chickweed, an aging pizza delivery boy.
But then he had a thought. An engaging thought. A hopeful thought. “I,” he thought, “am a pizza delivery boy. A pizza delivery boy!” With a flash of insight, he looked to the half dozen pizzas that he was carrying. Maybe, just maybe, the monsters didn’t want to eat him so badly as they wanted to eat these pizzas!
Pushing his wallet into his back pocket, Fred knelt and set the pizzas onto the floor.
The trolls didn’t know what to make of this. They narrowed their eyes at him, and halted their forward movement. One in particular caught Fred’s eye. It was the biggest of the monsters. This one, thought Fred, was his entrée into the bunch. Fred was always able to pick out the hungriest person in any group to which he delivered a pizza. The hungriest one, in Fred’s experience, was always the most cooperative.
“Easy there, Champ,” said Fred. Fred was in his element, now. If there was one thing he knew, it was how to deliver pizza. With hands that shook only slightly, he took the first pizza box and opened it. He tore the top flap off of the box, leaving the pizza on the serving tray of the box’s bottom. This he set on the floor. Then, with a well aimed thrust, he pushed it across the tiled foyer toward the biggest of the monsters.
The monster picked up the box that had slid to a stop at his feet. He picked it up and smelled the pizza.
If its heavy salivation was any indication, Fred thought, the monster liked what it smelled.
Quickly, Fred opened the next box. This, he pushed across the length of the foyer as well. As it slid, the monsters it neared took a step backwards. They stared suspiciously at the box, then looked to the largest of the monsters once again. None of them picked up the pizza.
Fred returned to the first monster, the one holding the pizza.
“C’mon,” he said. “Try a bite. It’s good.” He got no response.
Fred chastised himself for trying to talk with these monsters. Clearly, they had no language. Or, if they did, it wasn’t English. Instead of talking, he opened up the next box and took a slice from it.
Anchovies.
Fred’s tongue thickened at the thought of eating this pizza festooned with little fish. But, he thought, this was no time to be picky. Fred took a large bite and started chewing. He made great efforts to smile through the vile taste. Fish. Salty fish. Little tiny salty fish. His gag reflex engaged, but he denied it as he swallowed. He smiled again, and rubbed his tummy. “Yum,” he said.
The biggest of the monsters looked from Fred to the box he held in his big slab of a hand. Then, with a dexterity that surprised Fred, he took a slice of pizza—pepperoni—out of his own box. He didn’t eat it like Fred had, though. He didn’t eat it like anyone Fred had ever known. For whatever reason known only to monsters, it carefully rolled up the slice of pizza until it looked like a crescent roll. This, he dropped whole onto his tongue.
All eyes were on the monster. Fred’s eyes, and also the eyes of the other monsters. Would he like this new food?
The answer to the question came in the form of Obeast rolling up another slice of pizza, and popping it, too, into his mouth. He made noises of appreciation as he chewed.
Now, the other trolls couldn’t get to the open box on the floor fast enough. If this was good food, they knew, Obeast was likely to eat it all before they had a chance to sample it. Three trolls reached the box at the same time, and had a short tug-of-war with it before the pizza fell to the tiles of the foyer.
No matter, though. The trolls were happy to eat it off the floor. Biledumper tossed the now-empty box aside and sat down with the others. Following Obeast’s lead, the trolls rolled up slices of pizza and began eating.
Fred, for his part, was happy to set aside the slice of anchovy pizza. He continued opening boxes and pushing them across the floor. Soon, all of the creatures were sitting in rough circles about the room. They surrounded the pizza boxes, rolling up slices of this new food and ingesting them noisily. They particularly enjoyed, Fred noted, the anchovies.
Mr. Klieglight didn’t know what was happening. He only knew that his heart was beating faster than it ever had, that the silence was an even greater agony than the pounding on his door, that if he was a goner he wished they would just hurry up the job and get it over with. His time under the desk had brought him to a realization: he had nothing to live for, really. He had lost the only thing that was important to him: his principalship. Maybe he should just open the door and let the monsters have their way with him.
But even at this desperate moment, his survival instincts kicked in. “Help!” he yelled out again. He banged on the metal underside of the desk. It thundered a noise even louder than his voice. “Help!!!”
Fred Chickweed did help. While the monsters were enjoying their breakfast of cold pizza, he scurried to Principal Klieglight’s door.
“Unlock the door!” he whispered fiercely. “If we hurry, we can escape before the pizza runs out!”
Mr. Klieglight heard the directive. He had no idea what it meant. Was this a trick? It seemed unlikely, but Mr. Klieglight knew that he was no longer thinking very clearly. The last couple of days had just about worn him out. If the monsters were trying to trick him, so be it. He was tired. So tired.
Klieglight unbent himself and crawled out from underneath the desk. He stood, but was erect only for a moment before he fell once again to the floor. Cramped under his desk as he had been, his legs had fallen asleep. Completely asleep. He tried to stand again, but it was no use. Gumby legs. He had Gumby legs. When he tried to use them as one uses legs—to stand on, or to walk with, they were useless. Painfully, he dragged his legs behind him as he crawled, lobster-fashion, to the office door and unlocked it.