David Baldacci - Fries Alive

The crowd along the streets watched, mesmerized, as the float rose above their heads. Nancy, thinking that the crowd was mesmerized by her performance, smiled and said, “Thank you my fans, an encore? Well, if you insist.” After taking ten bows in a row Nancy Funkhouser-still oblivious to the floating float-started reciting favorite movie lines. “Here’s looking at you, kid,” she said. “Play it again, Sam.” She winked and exclaimed, “Rosebud!” She spread her arms to the sky. “Oh, Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

But when she finally looked down and saw how far up she was, she started screaming.

Alfred wiped his hands on a rag, adjusted his glasses, and smiled.

“Go, Freddy,” yelled Howie from the crowd. He was so enthralled by what he was seeing, he actually stopped nibbling on a cheese cube.

Freddy steered the float to the left and then to the right. “Okay, Wally,” he said into his walkie-talkie, “full speed ahead.”

Wally put his mouth against a back window in the float and blew out an enormous breath. The float shot forward. Pilot Freddy Funkhouser knew exactly what his target was, and it was dead ahead.

“Okay,” said Freddy into his walkie-talkie, “Let out half of your air.”

Si and Meese instantly did so, and the float went into a nosedive.

Nancy, hanging on to the turret for dear life, screamed, “What is going on, Dad?” She managed to turn around and saw Freddy at the controls.

“Freddy Funkhouser, you put this float back on the ground this instant.”

“That’s where I’m going, Nanny Boo-Boo.”

“Oh, all right, then. AAAGGGHHH!!!”

Wally had let out an enormous burp and the air force had knocked the Burger Castle sideways and then nearly upside down.

“My bad,” Wally admitted sheepishly.

However, the crowd cheered wildly at this maneuver. Freddy smiled. “Okay, let’s give them a show, guys! Back up!” he barked into his walkie-talkie.

Si and Meese filled themselves with air again.

The float soared into a vertical climb as the crowd watched in awed silence, all heads uplifted to the sky. The only sound was the hysterical screams of Nancy Funkhouser. Freddy barked commands to the Fries, and Wally and the other Fries raced around the insides of the Burger Castle float, blowing air out different windows.

After a series of loop-the-loops, roller coaster plummets, and other stunts that rivaled the best of any barnstorming pilots, Freddy set his sights once more on his original target: the Patty Cakes float.

“Okay, reduce altitude and full power, guys.”

Si and Meese let out their breaths as fast as they could and Wally blew as hard as he could out the window.

The Burger Castle float went into a tight dive, aimed right at the Patty Cakes behemoth. The Spankers saw what was coming, and they all started scrambling off the float. Adam Spanker looked so scared that Freddy actually felt sorry for him.

Okay , Freddy thought, if I bust up the Spanker float, I’m as bad as Adam is . He barked into his walkie-talkie, “Hard to port and then come in for a landing.”

Right at the very last instant, the float went into a sharp turn and buzzed right by the Patty Cakes float. The Burger Castle float made a perfect landing directly in front of the reviewing stand to the cheers of the crowd.

Stewie Spanker was so angry by this that he kicked the machine that was blasting the Patty Cake ditty and knocked it over. It kept playing, in a long moan that sounded like, “Poopy kook, poopy kook, spank me, man,” before dying out completely.

Freddy climbed out of the cockpit and waved to the cheering crowd. Judge Thackery beamed down at him from the reviewing stand. “I think we have our winner,” he said.

Alfred Funkhouser came running up while Nancy untied herself and climbed down from the turret, boiling mad.

“Freddy, I’m going to kill you,” she shouted.

Freddy said, “But Nanny Boo-Boo, we won, we won!”

“What!”

“WE DID! WE DID!” shouted her father as he picked up Nancy and swung her around before setting her back down.

Nancy turned and saw the crowd cheering her and her family, and she immediately started smiling and waving. “Thank you, my loving fans,” she murmured. “Another encore? Well, if you insist.”

The Funkhousers were up on the reviewing stand and about to accept the award from Judge Thackery when the Spankers stormed up.

“This is outrageous,” sputtered Chief Spanker. “Floats can’t fly. They obviously broke the rules. You have to disqualify them.”

“Oh yeah? Well, you sabotaged our float by putting shampoo in our gas tank,” Freddy shot back.

Chief Spanker tried to look innocent. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Adam, do you know what he’s talking about?”

“No, father, sir,” answered Adam politely.

“There,” roared Chief Spanker. “It’s this juvenile delinquent’s word against ours, Thackery. So you have to believe us.”

The Judge was thinking about this when Freddy spotted in the crowd the big-shot designer from New York he’d seen at the warehouse.

“Hey, that was a great float that you built for the Spankers,” said Freddy so loudly that Judge Thackery could hear.

“Thank you very much,” said the man. “They paid me a lot of money to do it.”

Judge Thackery looked at Chief Spanker. “Is that true?” he asked.

The Chief began to sweat. “Well, um, he, uh, I, uh…”

The judge said, “The rules specifically state that each float must be entirely designed and built by the people entering it. No paid outside help is allowed.” He turned to the crowd. “The Spanker float is disqualified and I hereby declare the Burger Castle float the winner.”

A mighty cheer went up through the crowd.

Judge Thackery looked at Alfred Funkhouser. “Alfred, I know you’re a very brilliant scientist, but how in the world did you get that float to fly?”

Alfred looked at his son. “I’m not the only scientist in our family, Judge. But if I had to guess, I’d say it was a simple matter of physics – right, Freddy?”

Freddy beamed.

But as Freddy and his family accepted the first-place trophy, Adam Spanker was already plotting something to turn defeat into victory.

Freddy flew the Burger Castle float over to the real Burger Castle as fast as he could, while his father and sister followed in their car. Freddy had a lot to do before anyone got there. As he looked down from the air he saw hundreds of people streaming toward the Burger Castle for lunch.

When his father and sister pulled up in their car, Freddy had already gotten the Fries in the back entrance and led them to a room with clothes lockers. He opened the locker doors and pulled the costumes out.

“Good thing these costumes are made of rubber, so they’ll stretch. But I have to make a quick modification on Si and Meese’s. I brought some stuff to do that.”

Five minutes later Freddy was finished. “Okay, you know what to do. Meet me at the front entrance in five minutes.”

Freddy hurried off to find his dad and sister.

Alfred had his tomato costume on and was warming up the ovens and getting the fat-free fry machines popping. Nancy went flouncing by in her ketchup costume.