The Trap (The Magnificent 12 2)

The Lepercons were still getting bigger. In fact, they were crowding the baggage area. Lepercons weren’t built to be the size of parade balloons, so they were as helpless as slugs. Big, giant slugs.

“Agara!” the one-legged Lepercon slurred.

“Yeah? Agara you, you big fat scab!” Jarrah snapped.

Mack spotted his bag on the carousel. He snagged it and wedged it onto the luggage cart along with Jarrah’s and Stefan’s luggage.

Nine Iron was just coming around on the carousel, still wedged between a garment bag and a duffel.

“You wait right there!” Nine Iron raged. “I’m coming for—”

He paused. Fumbled for his plastic mouthpiece. Breathed. Breathed.

Breathed.

Breathed.

“—you!”

Mack was breathing as hard as Nine Iron. The fear of death was gone, but he was now surrounded by what had to be a thousand pounds of warm blue cheese or a blue cheeselike product.

Nine Iron was struggling to get up off the carousel, but he was sitting kind of far down, with his legs over the side, so he had to use his walking stick to get himself up. Unfortunately, since Nine Iron was moving, the floor was also moving, and he couldn’t get the stick . . . Well, you get the picture.

“Do you have any idea what Lepercons cost?” Nine Iron cried.

“Leave me alone, you crazy old man!” Mack yelled.

“I’ll follow you to—”

He breathed. Breathed.

And then the carousel ran Nine Iron straight into the engorging, growing, swelling, bloated butt cheek of a massive Lepercon.

So Mack didn’t hear where exactly Nine Iron was going to follow him. He just heard a sort of angry “Mmmphh mmmph!”

“Let’s get out of here,” Jarrah said. “Place smells.”

“Blueturophobia,” Mack said. “It’s a fear of blue cheese.”

“Are you going to have one of your crazy fits?” Stefan asked.

“Not if you knock me out, throw me in a taxi, and don’t wake me up until I’m standing in a shower,” Mack said.

Five seconds later Mack was draped over the luggage. Stefan wheeled him—blissfully unconscious—toward the exit.

Chapter Three

Now we’ll explain all the stuff we didn’t explain earlier. It’s called “exposition.” Toss that word into the middle of your next English class. Your teacher will be like, “Wow, someone is actually paying attention!” That will be kind of sad, really.

David “Mack” MacAvoy was a normal-looking kid living a normal life in the almost normal city of Sedona, Arizona. He had no idea that he would be called upon to save the world from a terrible evil.

A terrible evil no one had actually heard of.

Everyone expects the world to eventually be destroyed by some combination of global warming, a giant asteroid strike, the sun going supernova, the planet falling off its axis, a wandering black hole, the explosion of the giant magma-filled zit below Yellowstone— Oh, you hadn’t heard about that? Well, it’s best not to think about it—or a rapidly spreading disease that turns people into flesh-eating zombies.

Asteroids, exploding sun, global warming, black hole, magma pimple, and zombie apocalypse—those are all happening for sure. Those are the things we know about.

But in the twenty-first