5 Coke’s Nightmare

Chapter 5 COKE'S NIGHTMARE At this point, you're probably wondering when Coke is going to get thrown into a volcano. Be patient, dear reader. Good things come to those who wait. We're only in chapter 5. While Coke slept, the neurons in his brain kept firing. The result was a dream that was almost like a movie in his head. It looked like this... Beautiful summer day. Coke and Pep were floating on inflatable pool rafts in the middle of a lake. There were no boats in sight. They didn't have a care in the world. Then, suddenly, the peace was disturbed by a faraway noise—the sound of a motor, possibly a small boat. Coke looked up. In the distance, he could see two tiny dots.

"What's going on?" Pep asked. "Sounds like motorboats." But the dots were not motorboats. They were Jet Skis. And they were heading directly toward the twins. Pep waved her arms to signal the drivers. But they didn't seem to notice. "I don't have a good feeling about this," Pep said. As the Jet Skis drew closer, the twins could see that two men were driving them. Two men wearing bowler hats. "Bowler dudes at twelve o'clock!" Coke shouted. "They're gonna run us down!" Pep screamed.

"Jump!" Coke shouted. He could see the bowler dudes' faces, snickering and giggling like idiots. He took a deep gulp of air and dove off his raft at the last possible instant before the Jet Ski would have rammed him. It passed right over, ripping the raft to shreds. Coke struggled to swim back to the surface. "Oooh, missed him by that much!" cackled the mustachioed bowler dude. "This is fun!" shouted his clean-shaven brother. "We should do water sports more often!" As Coke's head bobbed above the surface, he saw Pep, treading water and gasping for breath. Her raft had also been destroyed. "They're trying to kill us!" she shouted. The Jet-Skiing bowler dudes were circling around, gunning their engines for another attack. "They're coming back!" Pep screamed. "Get underwater!" Coke shouted, before filling his lungs with air.

The bowler dudes came roaring back, aiming their Jet Skis for the two heads bobbing in the water. Once again, the twins dove below the surface at the last second, avoiding certain death. "It's like Whac-A-Mole, but with people!" shouted the clean-shaven bowler dude as he passed by the spot where Pep's head had been a moment earlier. Coke and Pep stayed underwater as long as they could hold their breath. When they surfaced, a large yacht was approaching from the west. It cruised to a stop. There was a woman standing at the rail. "Mrs. Higgins!" Coke shouted. Yes, it was Mrs. Audrey Higgins, their germaphobic health teacher. She reached a hand down for Coke and Pep to climb aboard the yacht, and gave each of them a towel. "You saved our lives!" Pep marveled. "Why? You hate us. You've been trying to kill us ever since you locked us in the detention room and

burned the school down." "Well, I didn't want those idiots to kill you," Mrs. Higgins replied matter-of-factly, "because I wanted to do it myself!" It took a moment for Mrs. Higgins's words to sink in. It also took a moment for the colorless, sweet-smelling liquid she had soaked the towels in to take effect. But very soon, Coke and Pep were feeling lightheaded. "What's that smell?" Coke asked. "I think... I'm going to... pass out," said Pep. "It's my favorite scent—chloroform," said Mrs. Higgins. "It increases the movement of potassium ions through the nerve cells, which serves to depress your central nervous system. The result will be cardiac arrhythmia. Don't worry, in a few minutes you won't smell a thing. Because you'll be dead." Clearly, she was insane. Unbeknownst to Mrs. Higgins, a helicopter had landed at the other side of her yacht. While

she was busy poisoning the twins with chloroform, the helicopter pilot—a red-haired teenager—had come running over. "Step aside, you old hag!" he said, shoving Mrs. Higgins overboard. "Archie Clone!" Pep yelled. Yes, it was Archie Clone, the teenage supervillain who had attempted to drop them onto the tip of the Washington Monument. "Come with me!" Archie Clone yelled. "Quickly!" "I thought you died in Washington!" Coke yelled as he and Pep ran and climbed into the passenger side of the helicopter. It had no door on it. "You thought wrong," Archie Clone replied. He grabbed the controls and the chopper lifted off the yacht. Archie Clone turned the helicopter and pointed it toward the edge of the lake. Soon the twins could see land passing below. Archie Clone slowed the chopper and hovered over