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  Thug, Mug, and Punk just glowered back at him. Skunk cracked her knuckles.

  Uncle Jim turned to take in the rest of the tank. The interior wasn’t shiny silver, like the outside. It was coated in dried paint all the way to its domed top. Five holes, each half a foot across, ran along the bottom of the tank opposite the door. Above the holes was a white sign with blocky red letters. Uncle Jim stepped closer to peer at it though the message was clear—just one word over a skull and crossbones.

  “It says Danger,” someone said.

  Janet and Uncle Jim turned to find Limerick King standing in the doorway, Thug, Mug, Punk, and Skunk packed in behind him. He held a gleaming gold bulb the size of a bowling ball in one hand: the Holy Crown of Hungary.

  “I wasn’t sure he could read,” he said to Janet.

  She was staring at the crown.

  “Like it?” Limerick King said, giving it a jiggle. “I’ve already sent a ransom note to the Hungarian government. We’ll see how much they’re willing to pay to get it back. I put it on eBay, too.” He shrugged. “I’ll go with the highest bidder.”

  “Whatever you have planned for me, I’ll face,” Uncle Jim said. “But let the girl go.”

  Limerick King scoffed. “Oh, now you’re worried about her safety. After dragging her around chasing criminals you’re too thick to catch yourself.” He shook his head. “Sad.”

  “I’ll show you ‘sad,’ villain,” Uncle Jim growled. “Roses are red. Violets are blue. In two and a half seconds, I’ll be handcuffing you!”

  He slapped a hand to his side—then looked down with a frown.

  His Possum Belt was gone, along with all its gizmos.

  “Does he think that was a limerick?” Limerick King asked Janet.

  She just sighed.

  Limerick King looked at Uncle Jim again. “I had Punk and Skunk take your little toys. I’ll put those on eBay, too. They’ll be collector’s items . . . for fans of the late, great Possum-Man.”

  “You ready, boss?” Lug yelled from somewhere in the distance.

  “Indeed, I am!” Limerick King called back. “It’s time to paint the town red!”

  There was a squeaking sound, like a rusty tap being turned, followed by the clattering of unseen machinery.

  A loud glug-glug-glug turned Janet and Uncle Jim around to look behind them.

  A viscous blue liquid was flowing from one of the holes under the Danger sign.

  “Hey! I thought the paint was gonna be red!” Limerick King said.

  “There wasn’t enough to fill the tank, so I switched to blue!” Lug called back.

  “You should’ve told me! It ruined my zinger!”

  Uncle Jim and Janet backed up as the paint slowly spread across the bottom of the tank.

  Limerick King rubbed his chin, then grinned. “Looks like you’re going to die a true-blue hero, Possum-Man!”

  “Nice improv, boss!” Lug cheered.

  Janet waggled her hand—the international sign for “meh.”

  “Leave the one-liners to the Punster,” she said as the blue goo started to swallow the toes of her shoes. “It’s not really your thing.”

  Limerick King shot her a glare, then shifted his gaze to Uncle Jim.

  “And now, we’ve had our last brawl,” he said. “I get to see my archenemy fall. Is there a way to get free?” He looked around the tank, then smirked and shook his head. “None I can see. For you, the writing’s on the wall. Ta-ta!”

  He slammed the door shut, the deafening clank echoing through the tank like thunder.

  Uncle Jim threw himself at the door, but it was already sealed tight.

  There was a squeal of rusty metal, and the glugging from the holes at the far end of the tank grew louder.

  The paint wasn’t just oozing in now. It was pouring in. Almost immediately it was over Janet’s and Uncle Jim’s ankles.

  Uncle Jim pounded on the door with his gloved fists.

  “I’m Possum-Man and I’m here to say!” he bellowed. “With this you’re not going to get away!”

  “Still not a limerick,” said Janet.

  Uncle Jim turned toward her, broad shoulders sagging. “I’m sorry I got you into this, Janet.”

  “Don’t be,” she replied. She looked down at the rising pool of paint around her. It was already up to her knees. “Not yet, anyway. Limerick King told us how to get out of here.”

  Uncle Jim sloshed over to her through the thick blue liquid.

  “It must be fumes from the paint,” he said, flapping a hand in front of her face.

  “What?” said Janet.

  “You’re hallucinating. Limerick King didn’t tell us how to get out of here. It’s just a dream, Janet. A beautiful, beautiful dream.”

  Janet grabbed her uncle’s hand and pushed it away. “Listen! The last thing Limerick King said to us! It was a limerick!”

  Uncle Jim cocked his head. “‘Ta-ta’ is a limerick?”

  Janet gritted her teeth.

  “Not ‘ta-ta,’” she said. “Something, something, something brawl; something, something, something fall. ‘Is there a way to get free? None I can see. For you, the writing’s on the wall.’”

  “Oh. That.” Uncle Jim shook his head sadly. “Janet, that’s called a taunt.”

  “No! That nut can’t help himself! It’s a clue!”

  “Janet, ‘the writing’s on the wall’ is an expression. It means something’s been set in motion that can’t be stopped. Which is exactly what’s happening.” Uncle Jim turned away and brought his hand to his eyebrow as if saluting some unseen flag. “Farewell, Cleveland. I wish I could’ve fought for you longer.”

  Janet let out an exasperated groan, then started spinning slowly, scanning the stained walls of the tank.

  It was up to her—and the paint was up to her waist.

  “We need to take it literally,” she said, speaking to herself more than her uncle. “‘The writing’s on the wall.’ But there’s old paint all the way to the top. If there’s any writing, it would be buried under layers of . . .”

  She stopped turning.

  She was facing the Danger sign.

  The white Danger sign. Without a single drop of paint on it.

  Janet waded toward it.

  “This sign is new,” she said. “Otherwise it would be stained, like everything else in here.”

  Uncle Jim stopped saluting nothing. “Interesting. But I don’t see how Danger and a skull and crossbones help us.”

  “They don’t,” said Janet.

  The paint had reached the bottom edge of the sign—which, Janet noticed before it disappeared into the blueness, wasn’t perfectly smooth. In fact, there were wrinkles here and there all over the sign, she could see now.

  It was just a sheet of paper glued to the wall. Perhaps over something else.

  Janet moved closer and picked at the sign’s top left corner. The paper came unstuck slowly at first, then tore into a long strip. As it peeled away from the wall, chips of old paint came away with it, revealing writing beneath the paper—as well as a large, round button.

  Uncle Jim leaned to look past Janet at the real writing on the wall. Half of it was still covered in plastered-on paper, but this much was visible:

  NUAL

  RRIDE

  SH IN

  SE OF

  ERGENCY

  “It’s gibberish,” Uncle Jim said.

  “No, it’s not!” Janet shot back. “Don’t you see? This is how we get out!”

  Uncle Jim squinted at the letters like they were an eye test chart.

  “Uhh . . . we’re supposed to ‘nual rride sh in se of ergency’?” he said.

  “No,” Janet said. “We’re supposed to do this.”

  And she brought up her right hand and did it.

  For the solution to this story, please turn here.

  Monkey Business

  A FunJungle Mystery

  by Stuart Gibbs

  I was getting a corn dog at FunJungle Wild Animal
Park when some idiot tried to steal a squirrel monkey.

  Apparently, they thought you could steal a monkey the same way a burglar might swipe some jewelry: break into where it was kept, snatch it, and run off before anyone noticed. Maybe that would have worked with a more sedentary animal, like a small tortoise, or a banana slug, or even a sloth. But no monkey was going to let you grab it and run, especially a bundle of energy like a squirrel monkey. Imagine a kindergartener hopped up on three pounds of candy and a couple highly caffeinated sodas. That’s what a squirrel monkey is like.

  The thief had used a crowbar to pry open an access gate on the squirrel monkey cage at Monkey Mountain. After that, everything went wrong. The only squirrel monkey out that day was a two-year-old female named Zipper, who quickly slipped the thief’s grasp and bolted for freedom.

  It was a busy day at FunJungle and the walkways around Monkey Mountain were crowded with tourists. Anyone Zipper encountered reacted to the monkey’s sudden arrival in two distinct ways: they either recognized she was an escapee and tried to corner her—or they thought she was potentially dangerous and ran in terror. Both reactions freaked Zipper out.

  The closest security staff member to Monkey Mountain at the time was Marge O’Malley, who was often a bit overzealous in her attempts to do the right thing. Upon spotting Zipper, Marge immediately began pursuit.

  That’s when I got involved. I was at the Gorilla Grill, which was the closest place to eat by Monkey Mountain.

  My name is Teddy Fitzroy. I’m only thirteen, but everyone at FunJungle knows me because both my parents work here. We live in the employee housing behind the park, and I have my own official FunJungle ID so I can enter whenever I want. My school bus stop is by the entry gates, so I always pass through the park on the way home, usually stopping to get a snack and visit a few exhibits on the way.

  I was just about to order my corn dog when I heard a chorus of screams outside. Through the window, I saw Zipper bound across a series of tables. Startled tourists yelped as a medium-sized primate sent their french fries flying and knocked over their $11.99 souvenir mugs full of soda. Zipper still did less damage than Marge, however, who came barreling through, knocking tourists aside left and right in pursuit of the monkey. She made a desperate lunge for Zipper, but missed her and landed on a few ketchup squeeze bottles, which discharged all at once, splattering a poor Japanese family with red goop.

  I abandoned my place in line and joined the chase, partly to help catch Zipper—and partly to try to make sure Marge didn’t cause any more trouble. Sadly, I didn’t move fast enough.

  Just beyond the Grill was an open plaza where several of FunJungle’s mascot characters had gathered for photo ops with the guests. The characters were merely adults dressed as animals. It always struck me as odd that tourists would wait up to half an hour in the hot sun to take pictures with pretend animals when there were real animals all around them. But the guests loved it and were dutifully waiting in line when Zipper and Marge came charging through.

  Zipper made a beeline for Uncle O-Rang, perhaps mistaking the fake orangutan for a real one and thinking that a fellow primate would protect her from the crazed security guard bearing down on her. What Zipper didn’t know was that the person playing Uncle O-Rang had an irrational fear of squirrels, having been attacked by a rabid one as a child. Now, a squirrel monkey doesn’t really look like a squirrel at all. Squirrels are short and squat while squirrel monkeys are lean and spindly with long, prehensile tails. But it was notoriously hard to see out of the giant heads of the costumes. To the poor actor playing Uncle O-Rang, Zipper was just a blur of fur that could have been a rabid squirrel. He saw her racing toward him, then felt the thud as she leaped onto his enormous orangutan head. Zipper was only looking for comfort, but the actor mistakenly believed she was attacking him. He promptly screamed in terror and began to flail his arms wildly. He didn’t come anywhere close to dislodging the monkey on his head—although he did ape-smack an unfortunate grandmother from Toledo.

  At this point, Marge arrived on the scene and, rather than attempting to calm the frantic fake orangutan, she decided this would be the perfect time to ambush Zipper. The squirrel monkey was certainly distracted, desperately clinging to Uncle O-Rang’s mega-cranium like a tiny bull rider as he thrashed about beneath her. Unfortunately, stealth was not exactly Marge’s forte. She came barreling in like an angry rhino and lunged at Zipper. The monkey easily saw her coming and leaped to the safety of a jacaranda tree while Marge plowed headlong into Uncle O-Rang. The two of them smashed into Zelda Zebra, and all three tumbled into the landscaping. The head of Zelda’s costume popped off, mortifying a group of kindergarteners who thought that Zelda was real—and that they had just witnessed her decapitation.

  Zipper fled onward into FunJungle.

  I helped the mascots get back to their feet, then headed back toward Monkey Mountain. I figured I’d need the help of some of the primate specialists to recover the escaped monkey.

  It turned out that, while Marge had been causing chaos in her pursuit of Zipper, a significantly more competent group of security guards were back at the scene of the crime, doing their best to apprehend the criminal. A keeper who had been on duty nearby had identified three tourists who had all been close to the squirrel monkey exhibit at the time of the attempted primate heist. While there were thousands of security cameras all throughout the park, none looked directly at the squirrel monkey exhibit, but a few covered the nearby walkways, and security was able to quickly confirm the proximity of each suspect.

  When I came along, the three suspects had been rounded up and were seated in the shade of a large oak tree near Monkey Mountain, under the watchful eye of FunJungle Security. Chief Hoenekker, the head of the security division, greeted me gruffly as I wandered up. “Hello, Teddy. I figured I might be seeing you. You’re never far away when there’s trouble.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with this, I swear,” I said.

  “I know,” Hoenekker replied, then looked to the primate keeper, who was a middle-aged woman with the name Padgett on her official uniform. Padgett was petite, with a short haircut and a dark tan from long days working outside. “Did you see any of these people approach the exhibit?” Hoenekker asked her.

  “No,” Padgett replied. “I was busy with the colobus monkeys. But I know they were all close by when the attack occurred.”

  “I didn’t go anywhere near that exhibit!” the first suspect exclaimed. He was a short, pudgy guy in a baseball cap and a FunJungle T-shirt. He looked to be in his twenties and was kind of twitchy and nervous. “I would never try to steal a monkey! I’m an active conservationist!” He quickly reached into his pocket.

  All the FunJungle guards went on alert, going for their Tasers, as if fearing the guy was reaching for a gun.

  The suspect raised his hands in fear, now with his wallet clutched in them. “Don’t tase me!” he cried. “I was just getting out my membership card from the World Wildlife Fund!”

  The security guards all relaxed a bit. Hoenekker snatched the wallet away and looked through it. Sure enough, there was a WWF membership card in it, along with a FunJungle annual pass and a FunJungle credit card.

  “I’m innocent, too,” the second suspect said quietly. She was a meek teenager in dark clothing with a long overcoat. The clothing looked like it was some sort of personal statement to me, because it certainly wasn’t practical for a summer day at FunJungle, where it could often be over ninety degrees. “I didn’t even know I was anywhere near the squirrel monkeys. I was trying to find the Polar Pavilion. I’m supposed to be meeting my friends there.” Her phone started buzzing. “That’s probably them now. Can I answer it?”

  “No,” Hoenekker told her. “None of you talks to anyone until I’m done with my questioning.” He shifted his attention to the third subject, an older man in a spiffy suit that seemed very out of place compared to the shorts and T-shirts most tourists wore. “How about you? What’s your story?”

&n
bsp; The third suspect started speaking rapidly—in Italian. The words poured out of him in a torrent. I couldn’t understand a thing, but I got the sense he was confused about what was even happening.

  “Whoa!” Hoenekker shouted, signaling him to calm down. Then he spoke loudly and slowly, as if that would possibly make the man understand him. “Do . . . you . . . speak . . . English?”

  “Inglese?” the man asked. “No Inglese. Italiano!”

  Hoenekker sighed, exasperated, then looked to his team. “Does anyone here speak Italian?”

  “I visited Italy last year!” one guard volunteered. “I learned a little bit.”

  “Do you have any idea what that man is saying?” Hoenekker asked.

  “Er . . . Not really,” the guard admitted. “Most of the words I learned had to do with pizza.”

  Marge O’Malley suddenly came along, triumphantly bearing Zipper. She had managed to catch the monkey in a large butterfly net and had then twisted the netting around, the same way one might close a bag of bread, to keep the monkey from escaping. Zipper didn’t seem to appreciate this at all and was chattering angrily. “Our crisis is over!” Marge announced proudly. “I have recovered the monkey!”

  “In a net?” Keeper Padgett gasped. “Oh, the poor thing!”

  “She’s not hurt, I assure you,” Marge said. “I caught her way over by the giraffe exhibit.”

  “Must have reminded her of home,” Padgett said, taking the net from Marge. Then she looked at Zipper, who was tangled in the netting, and said, “Don’t worry, sweetie. I’ll get you out of there as fast as I can.” She turned to Hoenekker. “Do you mind if I take her? She’s had a traumatic day.”

  “Of course not,” Hoenekker said. “Take good care of her.”

  Padgett hurried off, Zipper still bound in the net. As she passed the suspects, the young monkey suddenly began squawking wildly. The suspects recoiled in surprise. A tiny tuft of dark fabric slipped from Zipper’s hand and wafted to the ground.

  Hoenekker snatched it up and examined it closely. It was only half an inch long and extremely fuzzy, like a woolly bear caterpillar.