Charlie Numbers and the Woolly Mammoth by Ben Mezrich & Tonya Mezrich
Author:Ben Mezrich & Tonya Mezrich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published: 2019-11-04T16:00:00+00:00
* * *
Ten minutes later Charlie, Crystal, and Kentaro found themselves standing in the middle of a partially constructed domelike building, looking out through flaps of tarp at the surrounding reddish dunes, which rose and fell all the way to the fence they had just attempted to climb. The walk over from the padlocked gate—twenty feet down from where they had tried to make their surreptitious approach—had gone by in terrifying silence. Although the two men hadn’t touched them, prodding them along with the cone of light from the flashlight and a lot of violent pointing—there was no mistaking their malevolent mood. It seemed that these two men wanted nothing more than for one of the three kids to make a break for it, and no doubt they’d have easily chased them down. Then—who knows? Charlie had no idea why they’d been taken inside the construction site, or what the men wanted.
The under-construction building, if you could call it that, was still mostly insulation, two-by-fours, and foam padding, lit by a handful of bare lightbulbs hanging from the arched ceiling. Without the lightbulbs, they’d have had to rely on the flashlight; the sky had gone from gray to dark, and though at that time of the year that could mean anywhere from five to seven p.m., they were clearly well past the zoo’s closing hours.
“Our parents are going to be looking for us,” Charlie said, his voice quivering. He was shaking all over, and he was pretty sure it had nothing to do with the cold.
The insectoid man was about to answer when another voice broke through the darkness.
“No reason to be concerned,” a man’s voice said, with the hint of an English accent. “This will only take a few minutes, and then we can all be on our way. I’m just curious why the three of you seemed so intent on climbing my fence.”
The voice was followed by the man, who stepped beneath one of the tarp’s flaps and into the domelike building. The man was well dressed in a gray flannel suit and matching tie, and even in the dim light from the naked bulbs, Charlie could see that his face was tanned and lined, almost like leather. Above his sky-blue eyes, he had a shock of almost-white blond hair.
He crossed the room in front of them and paused by a mahogany table that was pressed up against one of the still-under-construction walls. At first Charlie had been too terrified to notice, but on the table sat a large spherical globe on a metal base. Charlie briefly caught sight of other objects on the table: something long, slightly curved, and white, next to a coffee cup emblazoned with a word he could barely make out, something that started with “LON.” But then the man placed a palm on the globe, gave it a good spin, and Charlie’s attention was diverted. The sphere spun and spun and spun, a mesmerizing blur.
“I know my associates can be a little blunt,” the man continued, signaling the two other men to leave the room.
Download
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
