Fart Squad #3 Read online

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Excerpt from Fart Squad #4: The Toilet Vortex

  Back Ad

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I’m not kidding—it was a UFO, I promise!”

  Darren Stonkadopolis had called an emergency meeting of the Fart Squad and now he was standing in front of its three other members at the empty drive-in. The drive-in was closed for the season so it was the perfect spot for their practice sessions. He was trying to tell them about the close encounter of the stinky kind he’d had the night before.

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” said Tina Heiney, decked out in a spotless secret Fart Squad outfit. “What did it look like, a flying saucer?” She could barely get through that sentence without laughing, then snorting with pure glee. Tina might have looked like a little princess, but a lot of what came out of her was royally inappropriate.

  “I’m not sure exactly,” Darren admitted. “I didn’t really stop to look at it. But it was definitely coming after me. Another few minutes and I would have been abducted for sure!”

  “You positive about that?” Juan-Carlos Finkelstein asked, grinning. Darren could tell by his tone that the lanky class clown was winding up to tell another one of his jokes. “Maybe they just wanted directions,” he started, then paused for comedic effect. “You know, to the Big Dipper!”

  “Yes—I’m positive about it!” Darren said. He was used to Juan-Carlos trying to be funny any chance he got, but this was no laughing matter. “I’d heard all the recent reports and sightings, and I didn’t take them very seriously either. But I barely got away last night. What if that UFO comes back for me? And what if you guys are with me?”

  Finally Darren said something that got the group’s attention.

  “At first all I noticed was a bright white glare looming over me,” he continued. “A storm was brewing and so I figured it was just a flash of lightning. But the light, along with an overpowering, stomach-turning odor, followed me for several minutes. I was a little scared to look up at the sky, but when I did, I spotted a large glowing object descending through the clouds, which proceeded to follow me until I found cover in a porta-potty.” At this, his friends broke out into gales of laughter, which he ignored. He would probably laugh too if he imagined what Walter or Tina would look like crouched inside a stall, hiding from nothing more than a pool of light.

  “Luckily, it started to rain,” he continued, “and the spacecraft retreated, but who knows where to and for how long?”

  “Please!” Tina said, unconvinced. “It was probably just a helicopter or something. Everybody knows there’s no such thing as UFOs.”

  “I beg to differ,” Walter Turnip said. Round and plump, he seldom used a simple word when there was a bigger one available (or ate a small portion when a bigger one was at hand), but Darren appreciated Walter coming to his defense. “Given the sheer, incalculable immensity of the cosmos, it is statistically unlikely that only our own native Earth would give birth to sentient life-forms,” he said as he devoured a plate of hot dogs. “Mere probability dictates that we are not alone in the universe.”

  “I suppose,” Tina admitted. “But that doesn’t mean that honest-to-goodness space aliens are taking joyrides over Buttzville.” She rolled her eyes at the very notion. “You were probably just seeing things.”

  “No way,” Darren said. “I know what I saw. And I’m not the only one. There’s been a bunch of UFO sightings around here lately. And guess what? Some of the eyewitnesses were nose witnesses, too. They reported smelling the same peculiar odor when the UFO appeared.”

  “What kind of odor, exactly?” Tina asked.

  Darren tried to describe it. “A gross, poopy smell . . . like a titanic toot.”

  “In other words,” Juan-Carlos said with a smirk, “an Unidentified Farting Object?”

  Tina peered suspiciously at Walter.

  “You can refrain from looking at me,” he protested, even though his farts were big and powerful enough to propel him through the air like a human-sized blimp. “It was not yours truly, I assure you!”

  “I never thought it was,” Darren said. “But what are we going to do about the real aliens?” He was frustrated by his friends’ failure to take this seriously. “We could be facing an invasion from outer space!”

  Tina shrugged. “I still think you’ve seen too many silly sci-fi movies,” she told Darren. “I can’t believe I’m wasting a perfectly good Saturday on this.”

  “Laugh all you like,” Darren said, “but as team leader I say we need to practice our powers some more in case that UFO comes back.”

  “I guess some extra practice couldn’t hurt,” Juan-Carlos said. “Since we’re here anyway.”

  Walter finished the last of his hot dogs. “I’m certainly amenable to any impromptu exercises . . . if there are burritos involved.”

  “Why not?” Tina sighed. “This afternoon is already shot.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Darren said, relieved that the Squad was finally listening to him. He dashed into the abandoned snack bar and returned moments later with a tray of reheated burritos. “Time to fuel up. Dig in!”

  “With the utmost pleasure!” Walter licked his lips in anticipation. As far as Darren knew, Walter was the only member of the Fart Squad, and probably the human race, who actually enjoyed eating the soggy, greasy burritos. Anyone else might have been grossed out by their power alone, because they sure didn’t get so potent from tasting good. If they tasted good, they’d have been gobbled up, not left over for the lunch ladies to keep reheating in the microwave day in, day out, to the point of radioactivity. But Walter Turnip didn’t care.

  Walter eagerly wolfed down one burrito after another until his belly filled with gas and he became so rotund that he lifted off the ground like a hot-air balloon. “Be careful to keep out of sight,” Darren coached him. “Don’t fly higher than the trees or movie screen.”

  Walter circled above the drive-in, propelled by jets of gas from his rear end, while Darren and the others each helped themselves to a burrito—with a lot less enthusiasm. Tina nibbled at hers delicately, using a bib and napkin to keep from making a mess. Juan-Carlos washed his down with a bottle of chocolate milk to kill the taste.

  “Ugh.” Darren forced down another bite. “Why couldn’t we get our powers from something yummier? Like doughnuts or jelly beans or something?”

  “Then we’d be the Cavity Squad,” Juan-Carlos joked. “But wait until I show you how long I can delay my stink bombs these days. Watch this!”

  He dashed across the gravel lot until he was more than a hundred yards away from the others, halfway between the snack bar and the thirty-foot-tall movie screen at the far end of the drive-in. At his signal, Darren called up the stopwatch app on his phone. Then Juan-Carlos squatted and grimaced in concentration, like he was ripping a big one.

  Darren didn’t hear or smell anything, but he hadn’t expected to. Juan-Carlos’s farts were like time bombs, going off after he dealt them. He’d been working on delaying the explosions for as long as he could manage. Darren started the timer on his phone.

  “Don’t hold your breath waiting for this one!” Juan-Carlos hollered back at them. “I’m going for a personal best!”

  He sure wasn’t kidding. By the time he’d run all the way back across the lot to rejoin the rest of the Squad, the stink bomb still hadn’t gone off.

  Darren w
as impressed. Tina not so much.

  “How do we know this wasn’t just a dud?” she asked. “You sure you actually did anything?”

  “Look who’s talking,” Juan-Carlos replied. “Little Miss Silent-But-Deadly.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You know,” she said sweetly, “I need to practice, too.”

  Juan-Carlos gulped and backed away from the tiny little girl, whose sneaky stealth farts were potent enough to knock out a fellow Fart Squad member.

  “Whoa,” Darren said. “Let’s play nice here. Remember, there is no I in Fart Squad—”

  A foul odor washing over the drive-in interrupted his pep talk. The sour smell seemed to come out of nowhere.

  “Not bad,” Tina congratulated Juan-Carlos. “If you’re impressed by that kind of thing.”

  “Um, I wish I could take credit.” Juan-Carlos looked puzzled. “But mine are usually much louder, you know?”

  “It wasn’t you!” Darren blurted. He recognized the ominous smell instantly. “The UFO! It’s back!”

  Darren peered anxiously at the sky, just in time to be blinded by a sudden, all-too-familiar glare. The brightness cut through the cloudy, overcast sky, lighting up the drive-in as though it were the middle of summer. Walter swooped down from above, shouting and waving his arms.

  “We are not alone!”

  A glowing object descended from the clouds, accompanied by gusts of pungent exhaust that stank to high heaven. The smell was vaguely fartlike, but Darren still couldn’t quite place it.

  “See!” he said. “I told you I wasn’t joking!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Okay,” Tina admitted, “maybe you weren’t imagining things.”

  As the UFO came in for a landing, Darren shielded his eyes with his hand to get a better look at the large glowing object. About the size of a mobile home, it was made entirely of tinted glass panes lit up from inside.

  Kind of like a greenhouse, Darren thought.

  Walter touched down on the gravel beside Darren and the others. He looked relieved to be back on solid ground.

  “As you can see,” he pointed out, “I am most definitely not the UFO in question!”

  Spewing clouds of noxious exhaust, the glowing glass ship landed inside the drive-in, several yards away from Darren and his friends. A door slid open and a landing ramp descended to the ground. Just like the night before, visions of slimy tentacles, drooling jaws, and death rays invaded Darren’s mind. He finished off his burrito in a hurry and clenched his butt to hold on to his farts, just in case he needed them to defend Earth. “Bring it on,” he muttered.

  But, to his surprise, the aliens exiting the UFO looked like . . .

  Flowers?

  Bright-yellow sunflowers to be exact. They glided toward the Squad on graceful green stems. Rings of sunny petals surrounded their disklike faces. Leafy branches served as their limbs. They were each about as tall as a child and gave off a delicate scent that reminded Darren of his mother’s perfume.

  “Why, they’re almost as pretty as I am!” Tina beamed happily. “I approve!”

  Juan-Carlos, on the other hand, sounded almost disappointed. “What kind of aliens are these? I was expecting something gross and creepy . . . not a walking bouquet!”

  “More like extraflorestrials,” Walter said. “Possibly an alien variety of Helianthus annuus.”

  Everyone gave him blank looks.

  “Sunflowers,” he explained. “Or maybe Star Flowers, in this case.”

  “Star Flowers,” Tina repeated, all dreamy-eyed and enchanted.

  Darren had to admit that the alien flowers did not look particularly scary. He’d heard of nasty, man-eating plants before, but the Star Flowers appeared more decorative than dangerous. He sniffed the air where traces of the UFO’s exhaust scent still lingered.

  “Why does their ship smell like farts?” he wondered.

  “Fertilizer,” Walter corrected him, “not flatulence. Although you can be forgiven for confusing the odors. Many varieties of fertilizer manifest a distinctly fecal aroma. Anyone who has ever lived near a large agricultural complex can testify to that.”

  “You mean it smells like poo,” Darren translated. “Makes sense, I guess. They are plants, after all.”

  The Star Flowers approached the kids warily. Shiny black eyes the size of sunflower seeds looked over Darren and his friends. Their mouths were just tiny slits. They seemed perfectly harmless.

  “I don’t see any weapons,” he observed.

  “Nope,” Juan-Carlos admitted. “We’re talking pistils, not pistols.”

  Tina groaned again.

  Darren stepped forward to meet the aliens. He swallowed hard.

  “Hello?”

  “Don’t get too close, Darren.” Juan-Carlos hung back with the others. “They’re just flowers, I know, but . . . be careful.”

  But careful was not a word that had ever been used to describe Darren, who had a bad habit of rushing into situations without thinking. As leader of the Fart Squad, he felt it was his duty to check out the aliens and represent for his crew.

  “Um, welcome to Earth?” He wasn’t quite sure what to say, or even if the aliens could understand him. “Live long and prosper? May the Force be with you? ¿Habla inglés?”

  One of the Star Flowers was a few inches taller than the other aliens and stood out in front of the rest of them. The bizarre being paused in front of Darren and tilted its head curiously. A fresh whiff of perfume tickled Darren’s nose, but the Star Flower didn’t reply to the human greeting.

  “Can you understand me?” Darren asked. Resorting to sign language, he pointed first at himself, then up at the sky. “Me . . . Darren. You . . . from out there?”

  The aroma from the Star Flower grew stronger.

  “Ah, you perceive that mellifluous bouquet?” Walter said, sniffing deeply. “Note the subtle shifts in its fragrance.”

  “So what?” Juan-Carlos asked impatiently. “I mean, they smell nice and all, and I’m glad they’re not eating us, but are they shy or something? Why aren’t they saying anything?”

  A crazy idea hit Darren.

  “Maybe they are,” he said. “They’re flowers, right? Maybe they communicate through smells instead of words.”

  “You mean they have extrascentsory perception?” Juan-Carlos joked.

  Tina groaned again. “Probably just as well they can’t understand you.”

  “I’m serious,” Darren said. “When have you ever heard of a talking flower? Maybe they ‘talk’ to each other in fragrances instead of words.”

  “Then perhaps we can reply via some olfactory emissions of our own,” Walter suggested. “More than most people, we are certainly capable of generating very perceptible aromas.”

  “And then some,” Juan-Carlos said.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Darren cautioned. His own stomach was rumbling impatiently, thanks to the burritos, but he kept the gas locked up tight. “Pleasant smells are one thing, but who knows what a fart means to them. They might take any rude smells as insults . . . or a declaration of war!”

  “Good point,” Juan-Carlos agreed.

  Darren decided to stick to the basics. He took another step forward and held out his hand.

  “Peace?”

  The Star Flower appeared to be considering Darren’s outstretched hand. After a moment’s pause, it extended a leafy green tendril toward him.

  “Yes!” Darren said hopefully. “That’s right. We just want to make friends with you!”

  And then, just as Darren thought he was about to be the first kid on Earth to establish contact with actual beings from outer space, a loud, putrid fart, strong enough to make grown men weep, exploded right in the middle of the Star Flowers. . . .

  Oh no! Darren thought.

  In all the excitement, they had completely forgotten about Juan-Carlos’s stink bomb!

  CHAPTER THREE

  The explosive fart went off right where Juan-Carlos had planted it before. The Star
Flowers were knocked to the ground, overwhelmed by the sneak attack. Their faces twisted in shock. Their branches flailed wildly.

  “Oops!” Juan-Carlos said. “Talk about bad timing!”

  Ten minutes, forty-two seconds, Darren noted after checking his stopwatch. A new record all right. Just our luck!

  Swaying atop their stems, the Star Flowers managed to get upright again, glaring at the kids with their glossy black eyes. A new smell wafted over the Squad members. It was harsh—neither fartlike nor floral. It smelled . . . angry.

  Darren gulped. Could he make them understand that this was just an accident, or did they think they had been ambushed on purpose?

  “Sorry about that!” he called out urgently. He raised his hands and tried to look contrite. It was an expression that worked on his teachers and parents sometimes. He hoped the Star Flowers would be just as forgiving. “Our bad!”

  He half-expected the startled aliens to leave and never come back. Or, worse yet, zap them all with death rays in retaliation. But instead the Star Flowers began to . . . change.

  Cheery yellow petals turned gray and jagged. Graceful green stems transformed into an ugly shade of purple as they turned twisted and gnarly before his eyes. Thorny vines sprouted like tentacles. Bulging eyes turned bloodred. Their mouths turned into snapping jaws, like Venus flytraps’. And instead of smelling fragrant and flowery, the aliens now gave off a stomach-turning stench that rivaled anything the Fart Squad had ever dealt out. The smell was so bad that Darren had to put his hand over his mouth and nose.

  “Ugh!” Tina wrinkled her nose in disgust. “They smell like . . . well, you guys. No offense.”

  “I don’t understand,” Juan-Carlos said. “What’s happening?”

  Darren had seen enough monster movies to figure it out.

  “The radioactive fart!” he realized. “It’s mutating them! Turning them into monstrous . . . Stink Weeds!”