Tiny-Stego Stampede Read online

  I turned Bruno’s head toward the narrow gap, and the three of us barreled forward.

  “The swamp is down there!” I said. “Zip-Zap hates the swamp.”

  “I know. Maybe he’ll stop before he gets in the muck,” Lin said.

  Bruno crashed through the bamboo like it was made of wet tissue paper. The closer we got to the swamp, the more mud he slopped around. Soon it was a regular mud storm, but still, nothing could slow down our trusty triceratops.

  It was hard to see with all the mud flying around, but I could tell there were hundreds of tracks smooshed into the soft earth all around us. The shady grass forest began to lighten up as we made our way to a clearing that surrounded the swamp.

  I expected to see a Microsaur or two in the swamp, but I wasn’t prepared for what I saw next.

  The herd of stegosaurs surrounded Wilson, the massive patagotitan. They were enjoying the cool swamp, that is, until Zip-Zap squaaaaawk-ed right into the middle of the herd, still carrying Lin’s little sister on his back.

  Zip-Zap bounced, flipped, kicked, flapped, and half flew all around. Doing anything he could to keep his feathers and feet dry. The herd began to shift around, spooked by Zip-Zap’s wild actions. Wilson slowly turned his massive head toward the noise, then roared a deep rumbling sound that made the swamp water ripple. It was as if the stegosauri were waiting for their boss to tell them to move because all at once they started to stampede again.

  Mud, water, moss, and gunk splashed everywhere. Zip-Zap had seen enough. He bounced off the back of a particularly large stego and did an amazing double flip. When he was at his highest point, ChuChu slipped off and got stuck on the back plate of a stampeding stegosaurus.

  ChuChu’s little arms waved around, and while I couldn’t hear her over the loud, splashing noise created by the swampy stampede, I could tell by the look on her face that she was loving every second of her adventure.

  Zip-Zap flapped his wings so fast he looked like a cross between a hummingbird and an ostrich. He half fell, half flew over our heads toward dry ground.

  “No! NO NO NO NO NO NO NOOO!” Lin said as she watched ChuChu being carried away with the stampede. “Chase them, Bruno!”

  Bruno started through the swamp, but he was getting tired. We needed to do this smart, not fast, so I pulled him to a stop.

  “What are you doing, Danny? We have to save ChuChu!” Lin said.

  “I know, but we’ll never catch her like this. Bruno just can’t keep up,” I said. “We need a plan.”

  “We don’t have time for plans!” Lin said. “Let’s GO!”

  “You chase after them on Zip-Zap. I have another idea. Stay in touch with the Invisible Communicator, and we’ll work this out. I promise,” I said.

  Without answering, Lin shot into action. She didn’t slide off Bruno’s back; she jumped, grabbed on to a flexible bamboo pole, then used her momentum to twang through the air. She landed on a surprised Zip-Zap, and in a flash, they were chasing after the herd.

  “That was impressive, even for Lin,” I said to Bruno, who grunted in response.

  I pulled out my phone and launched the SpyZoom app. I didn’t want Lin to think I was doubting her ability to keep track of ChuChu, but I had secretly slipped a GPS tracking device inside her helmet, just in case. Turns out, it was a pretty good idea.

  The app located the GPS tracker and showed me on a map where they were heading. There was nothing but open prairies ahead of the stampeding stegos, so I knew Lin was in for a long chase. I tapped on my Invisible Communicator and heard Lin breathing hard in my ear.

  “Lin. Just keep following the stampede. I’m going to expand and put the fence in place. We need to be ready to corral the herd,” I said.

  “Hurry, Danny. These guys are faster than they look,” Lin said.

  “We’ll be there before you know it,” I said. Then Bruno galloped back toward the Fruity Stars Lab 3.0.

  When Bruno and I got back to the lab, I ran inside, switched on the Expand-O-Matic, and sized up back to normal as soon as it was ready.

  It was dangerous being regular-sized in the Microterium. I always worried, no matter how careful I was, that I might smash something really important. Even the plants in the Microterium are fragile. It had taken Professor Penrod years to build the perfect environment for the Microsaurs, but it would only take one big footprint by a clumsy nine-year-old boy to change everything. And it only got worse when you were in the biggest hurry of your entire life.

  I made my way fast as a rabbit into the barn-lab. The box of PIBB fence pieces was waiting for me on the floor where I had left it, but it wasn’t alone. And neither was I.

  I couldn’t believe it was true, but I was staring into the eyes of a curly-haired girl wearing a purple glitter vest and a detective’s hat. Vicky Van-Varbles, aka Lin’s worst enemy, aka the absolute last person I wanted to see in Professor Penrod’s secret lab, was staring back at me. But no matter how shocked I was to see her, it was obvious that she was much more shocked to see me.

  She dropped a glass beaker she was holding, and it shattered as it hit the floor.

  “You just … I mean … you were invisible … then you … umm … appeared in that … what the … huh?” Vicky’s words sounded like they were falling down a staircase, bumping out in little spurts as they hit each stair on the way down.

  I pressed the Invisible Communicator in my ear, turning it off for now. I was shocked to find Vicky in the barn-lab, but I was certain it was best to keep it a secret from Lin as long as possible. She had other, more important things to worry about.

  “Hi, Vicky. Um, is there any way you can just forget all of this and pretend it was a dream or something?” I said, hoping that Vicky would forget that she just saw me expand from ant-sized to me-sized in less than a second.

  “No way. Not a chance,” Vicky said, her words sounding like they’d finished falling down the stairs and were now dusting themselves off, ready to run right back up again. She put one hand on her hip and pointed right at me. “You and Lin are up to something really sneaky. Probably illegal and horrible, too, and I’m not leaving until I’ve uncovered all the clues and know exactly what’s going on here.”

  My stomach was in knots. Vicky Van-Varbles was here, and she wasn’t going away.

  And while I was standing there staring at her, a stampede of environment-smashing stegos was demolishing the Microterium, ChuChu was dangling from the back of one of them, Lin was following them on her own, and I still had to make a place for Wilson, install a fence, and get our herder T. rexes in place. There was too much to do and too little time. We needed help.

  Lin was going to hate—and I do mean hate this. But … maybe we could use one problem to solve the others.

  “So … um … how do you feel about dinosaurs?” I asked Vicky, and a little smile lifted the corner of her mouth.

  CHAPTER 9

  YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS

  There was no way Vicky would believe me if I told her we were about to shrink to the size of ants, then hang out with hundreds of tiny dinosaurs. I mean, I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. I considered just shrinking her and letting her figure it out on her own, but I wanted to start slow, using science as my guide. But starting slow wasn’t really an option when your best friend and her little sister were caught up in a stego stampede. I decided to work and talk at the same time.

  “So, you expect me to believe that dinosaurs are not actually extinct,” Vicky said as she helped me lower a ladder the professor kept around for just such an occasion.

  “I know it goes against everything you have ever heard, but yeah,” I said. We stretched the ladder from the floor of the barn-lab to the cement ledge at the back of the Microterium, carefully balancing it above the fragile micro-ecosystem.

  “Well, I’ve never seen one,” Vicky said.

  I thought back to a few days ago when I was literally riding in a mint tin stuffed inside Vicky’s purse with two Microsau
rus rexes. She might not have seen one, but she had no idea how close she had been to a tiny version of me and two baby Tyrannosaurus rexes.

  “Well, that’s the tricky part. You see, after millions and millions of years, the few dinosaurs that survived began to lose their habitat to everything from floods, to humans building pizza parlors, to raging forest fires. So, to survive, they shrunk,” I explained. I crawled out on the ladder, pushing the big box of PIBB fence pieces in front of me.

  “Smaller. How much smaller?” Vicky said.

  “Much smaller,” I said. “Hand me that little hand shovel, please.”

  Vicky found the small shovel, then carefully teetered out on the ladder with me.

  “So much smaller, that for millions and millions of years, nobody even knew they existed,” I said as I inched out over the grassy plains area of the Microterium. I found a nice spot where a little creek was making its way through a tiny canyon, and I started digging.

  “I know you’re just making this up to make me feel dumb, Danny. It won’t work,” Vicky said.

  “No. I’m not. Really, I’m telling the truth,” I said. Then I saw something below me that would clear things up. One of the microsized anklyosaurs that we had used to train Pizza and Cornelia was chomping on a cactus so small it looked like a green speck of dust. I carefully picked the little guy up by his knobby tail. “Here. Hold out your hand. I’ll show you.”

  Vicky looked at me through squinted eyes. I could tell she did NOT trust me one bit. After thinking about it for a few seconds, she slowly reached out her hand.

  “Now, be careful. This little guy is fragile. Are you ready?” I asked.

  “Ready for what? To play make-believe dinosaurs with you?” she said. Then she stuck her hand out toward me, daring me to change her mind.

  I lowered the well-armored Microsaur into the palm of her hand. Then I waited as Vicky inspected the little critter.

  “It’s a bug,” she said.

  “No. It’s an ankylosaur,” I said with a smile.

  “It looks like a bug,” Vicky said. With the little critter balanced in her hand, she reached down and dug in the big purse on the floor nearby. Without ever taking her eyes off the Microsaur, she found a magnifying glass.

  “Good idea,” I said as I carefully lifted one of the pre-assembled fence sections out of the box. “Get a closer look. Make sure to count his legs. Remember, bugs have six, dinosaurs have…”

  “Four,” Vicky said.

  “That’s right,” I said, feeling proud to be able to prove that I was right. “Dinosaurs have four legs.” I put down the back section of the fence in the nice grassy field.

  “And he’s covered in spikes or something. Almost like a turtle shell with bones,” Vicky said.

  “Yup. Ankylosaurs are armored dinosaurs. Pretty neat, eh?” I said, placing the next-to-last piece down in the grass and connecting it to the others.

  “Okay, I don’t know how you did this. Here. Take him back. I don’t like lizards, even really, REALLY small ones,” Vicky said. I looked over at her, and she looked like she was going to gag. “He’s all gross and spiny. What if he gives me warts?”

  I put the last piece of the fence in place, then held out my hand. She tumbled the Microsaur back to me, and I carefully placed him back next to his cactus. I was about to search for another Microsaur to show Vicky more proof, when it clicked in my brain that I didn’t need to. In fact, I could just play right along, and she would think there was nothing in the Microterium except my PIBBs, a whole lot of dirt and tiny plants, and a single, super-spiny, very tiny lizard. I smiled real wide, knowing that I had nearly been trapped into telling Vicky our biggest secret but that I was safe.

  “What?” Vicky said. “What are you grinning about?”

  “Nothing really. It’s just that you caught me. I was just goofing. There aren’t any tiny dinosaurs. You were right. Dinosaurs are totally extinct. There are only little lizards and bugs in here. That’s all. Sorry,” I said with a shrug of my shoulders.

  Vicky stood up on the ladder. It wobbled back and forth, making me really nervous. “Sorry? SORRY? You tell me this big lie to TRY to make me look dumb, which totally did NOT work by the way. Then all you have to say is…”

  “Sorry,” I said with another shrug.

  “Aaaargh! You are so WEIRD!” Vicky said. She started to walk back off the ladder, and with all the teetering, she began to lose her balance. Just before she fell right into the Microterium, she saved herself from falling by taking a big jump from the ladder to the big metal step.

  “Oh no! Run!” I shouted to Vicky as the Shrink-A-Fier turned on.

  “Run? Why? Is a dinosaur going to eat me?” she said as a shower of tiny orange particles sprayed from the nozzle. And in less than a second, my biggest problem was half the size of an ant.

  CHAPTER 10

  WELCOME TO THE MICROTERIUM

  I didn’t have time to put the ladder back. Not only were Lin and ChuChu in trouble, but now Vicky was Shrink-A-Fied and alone in the Microterium. Well, not actually alone—and that would become an even bigger problem if I didn’t hurry.

  Before shrinking myself, I decided it was worth the time to put the new, second Slide-A-Riffic in place. I put one end of the slide next to the Fruity Stars Lab 3.0, then stuck the other end up by the new stegosaurus fence. I had a feeling it might come in handy, and I’ve learned to trust my feelings in the Microterium.

  I stood on the metal step, careful not to step on Vicky, and I stepped down hard. The Shrink-A-Fier sprinkled Carbonic Reduction Particles down on me, and in no time at all, I was her size.

  I saw her before she noticed me. Her hat had fallen off, and her hair was all frizzed out like a cheerleader’s pom-pom. I’d seen Vicky mad before, but she wasn’t just mad. Vicky was furious.

  I cleared my throat to get her attention, and she turned around and pointed a finger at me, her eyes wide and her eyebrows pointing to an angry V in the center of her face.

  “You!” she shouted. “What have you done to me?”

  “Hang on. I know this is odd, but you’ll be fine. We just shrunk, that’s all,” I said.

  “That’s all? THAT’S ALL?! I have cake-decorating lessons in less than an hour. I can’t decorate a cake if I’m smaller than cake-decorating sprinkles! FIX THIS NOW, DANNY! NOW!” Vicky shouted.

  I stayed as calm as could be, then pointed to the Slide-A-Riffic. “See that contraption over there? We’re going to climb inside of it and zip down into the Microterium. Then I’m going to introduce you to a few new friends, who are totally safe. You’re going to think it’s so great that you’ll forget all about cake decorating and being little because you are going to see the coolest thing on earth. But first, you need to calm down and trust me,” I said.

  “Trust you? The guy who turned me into an ant? Are you kidding me?” Vicky said.

  I put my hands on my hips, copying the pose that she liked to use when she was in control. “You can trust me and I can show you something awesome. Or you can wait right here on this big metal step until I help my best friend rescue her little sister, who is currently in the middle of a stegosaurus stampede. Your choice,” I said.

  Vicky took a deep breath. Then she straightened her vest. She picked up her hat and put it back on her head.

  “I am not going anywhere with you, Danny Hammer. I am going to wait right here until you tell me how to get back to normal. Then I’m going to walk—no, RUN—to tell everyone, especially my mom, who is the mayor of this town if you didn’t know it, that you turned me INTO AN ANT AND TRIED TO SMASH ME LIKE A BUG!” Vicky shouted at the top of her lungs.

  I backed away slowly, making my way to the Slide-A-Riffic. “Okay, suit yourself, but just to let you know, there are pterodactyls in this Microterium. You don’t have to believe me now, but you will when they arrive. And if you think you like shiny, glittery vests, just wait until you meet Twiggy. My suggestion: Hand it over without a fight. Her beak is a bit snippy. And sharp,” I
said.

  I climbed inside the Slide-A-Riffic and released the brake. “See you soon. Watch out for flying alligators.”

  The Slide-A-Riffic started gliding away, but before it rolled to the end of the step, Vicky started running.

  “Wait for me!” she shouted, and I pressed on the brake lever just in time. She jumped inside, and the Slide-A-Riffic swayed back and forth.

  “Glad you could make it. As Professor Penrod would say, adventure awaits!” I said. Then I released the brake, and we whizzed toward the Fruity Stars Lab 3.0 at a speed that would make Lin very jealous.

  We landed with a bit of a thump, but I did use the brakes before we came to a total crashing halt. Vicky climbed from the basket and teetered around, a little dizzy from the ride.

  “Well, what did you think?” I asked.

  “I think you are trying to KILL me,” Vicky said.

  “Not even close,” I said.

  “Where are we? In the woods? I am not dressed for the woods, and there was something else that was wrong. What was it?” Vicky said dramatically. “Oh yeah. That’s right. I’M STILL TINY!”

  “We’ll take care of that soon, I promise, but for now there’s someone I’d like you to meet,” I said.

  Bruno was galloping our way, his big pink tongue slobbering out of his mouth. Vicky’s back was turned to him, and I couldn’t wait to see the surprise on her face when they met. Finally, some proof that even Vicky couldn’t ignore. He came to a stop so close behind her I was shocked she hadn’t noticed him.

  “Turn around. Someone wants to meet you,” I said with a grin.

  “It better not be Lin. That’s all I need, to be outnumbered by you two,” she said.