Escape from the Dungeons of Snerbville, page 1
part #1 of The Third Book of Bonkers Series
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PRAISE FOR BONKERS
“A fun, funny, and gripping read and, like all Patrick Carman books, full of memorable characters that suck you into a wonderfully weird, layered world... It all adds up to a fabulously good time.”
—Joe Purdy,
TV animation writer for
Arthur, Llama Llama, and Hey Arnold!
“This book is gross, hilarious, chaotic, funny, and scary...Maybe it’s the madcap plot, maybe it’s the deadpan humor, or maybe it’s the tale of friendship at its core, but this book grabbed me and didn’t let go. I can’t wait for the next installment!”
—Stephen Bramucci,
award-winning author of
the Danger Gang series
“Patrick Carman is a lovely and kind man with a wacko sense of imagination. I couldn’t have imagined this tale if I had fifty lifetimes to think about it. It’s wild, funny, outlandish, and outrageous. Boy, does it move!!! Take the wild ride. It’s a blast!”
—Richard Kind,
actor
“This book is the pits! And I mean that in the best way. So much laugh-out-loud fun and adventures from one armpit! I love this series—you’ll go Bonkers, too!”
—R. L. Stine,
author of Goosebumps
and Fear Street
“This suspenseful and hilarious Bonkers adventure has it all: embarrassing underarm problems, a mysterious abandoned lab where all the wacky and gross trouble starts, and three wisecracking friends trying to figure it all out. Patrick Carman knows exactly what tickles the funny bones for kids!”
—Rachel Lipman,
Emmy Award–winning
writer/producer of Rugrats, Recess,
and Sabrina the Teenage Witch
BOOKS BY PATRICK CARMAN
the bonkers series
The Terror in Jenny’s Armpit
Attack of the Forty-Foot Chicken
Escape from the Dungeons of Snerbville
the skeleton creek series
Skeleton Creek
Ghost in the Machine
The Crossbones
The Raven
Phantom Room
Skeleton Creek Is Real
Seven Secret Stories
the fizzopolis series
The Trouble with Fuzzwonker Fizz
Floozombies!
Snoodles!
the pulse series
Pulse
Tremor
Quake
the trackers series
Trackers
Shantorian
the dark eden series
Dark Eden
Phantom File
Eve of Destruction
the floors series
Floors
3 Below
The Field of Wacky Inventions
the elliot’s park series
Elliot’s Park
Haunted Hike
Walnut Cup
the atherton series
The House of Power
Rivers of Fire
The Dark Planet
the land of elyon series
The Dark Hills Divide
Beyond the Valley of Thorns
The Tenth City
Stargazer
Into the Mist
standalone novels
Thirteen Days to Midnight
Mr. Gedrick and Me
The Inventors
Towervale
contributing author
The Black Circle (The 39 Clues Series, Book 5)
Ghost Vision Glasses (The Guys Read Series)
Omega Rising (The Voyagers Series, Book 3)
ESCAPE FROM THE DUNGEONS OF SNERBVILLE
THE THIRD BOOK OF BONKERS
PATRICK CARMAN
Copyright © 2024 by Patrick Carman
E-book published in 2024 by Blackstone Publishing
Cover and interior illustration by Kristin Houser
Cover layout by Sarah Riedlinger
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Trade e-book ISBN 979-8-212-56491-5
Library e-book ISBN 979-8-212-56490-8
Juvenile Fiction / Horror
Blackstone Publishing
31 Mistletoe Rd.
Ashland, OR 97520
www.BlackstonePublishing.com
For Reece, the bravest of the brave!
CONTENTS
Barker Mifflin Sets the Stage While Falling into a Hole
1. Tilda Huxley
2. Tilda the Dungeon Raider
3. The Dungeon Raider Discovers Her Mission!
4. Ten Minutes Earlier!
5. Dr. Vexler Blows a Fuse
6. Dr. Vexler Understands the Size of the Problem
7. That’s a Very Big Eyeball You’ve Got There
8. I Have Discovered the Rainbow World
9. Barker and Doll-Sized Girl Venture into the Deep
10. Dr. Vexler’s Mega-Snerb-O-Matic
11. Tilda and the Commander Go Deep in the Dungeon of Snerbville
12. Dr. Vexler Takes Charge
13. I’m Inside a Snerb and I Don’t Like It!
14. Eyeball Blaster!
15. The Realm of Defenders
16. The Queen of the Snerbs
17. I’m Small Enough, Thank You Very Much
18. The End is Near!
19. The End is Here!
About the Author
BARKER MIFFLIN SETS THE STAGE WHILE FALLING INTO A HOLE
How, you might ask, do I find myself falling down a hole while riding a giant chicken? It seems like I’d have better odds of being struck by lightning on a sunny day while wearing clown shoes. I mean seriously, what are the chances of riding a gigantic chicken into a huge hole? I’m no mathematician, but there’s no doubt the likelihood is low.
I’ve given this question quite a lot of thought while falling into the hole, because it turns out the hole is pretty deep. By my calculations, falling in a hole while riding a forty-foot chicken is a seven-part process. As part of my ongoing effort to do a better job of avoiding disaster, I will now catalog the events leading up to my current situation.
THE SEVEN EVENTS THAT LED TO BARKER MIFFLIN FALLING INTO A HOLE
PART ONE: I snuck into an abandoned chemistry lab
Looking back now, this was the moment where it all went wrong. Like that thread you pull on your favorite pair of socks and it unravels a hole the size of a golf ball. Sneaking into Colossal Chemistry was my idea, not Jenny Kim’s or Fen Stenson’s. And why would I want to sneak into an abandoned chemistry lab in the first place? Why not act like a normal kid and play basketball after school or go home and make a sandwich? If I’m being honest with myself, which is something I tend to do when I’m falling down a hole riding a chicken, I snuck into Colossal Chemistry because I was sure something terrible had gone on in there. As a certified protector of humankind, I wanted to make sure my town of Nevermind wasn’t in any trouble. My mistake was taking Jenny and Fen with me.
Survival Nugget Number 216: Never bring untrained nitwits on a dangerous mission. They have no idea what they’re doing, and it will only lead to trouble.
Boy was I right when I wrote down Survival Nugget Number 216. Jenny touched something she shouldn’t have, then she wiped her hand in her armpit, and the rest is history. Really there’s no excuse for wiping an unknown substance off your hand in your armpit. It’s wildly unprofessional. If you want to know more about this situation, go back and read the first book of Bonkers—The Terror in Jenny’s Armpit—it’s all in there.
PART TWO: I helped Jenny with the terror in her armpit
On the surface, this seemed like the right thing to do. Jenny had something growing out of her armpit and it was getting bigger. Before we knew it, she was carrying that thing around in a wheelbarrow. We did eventually detach Jenny from something called a Snerb, but only with the help of Doctor Vexler, who lives underground in a place called Snerbville. For a doomsday prepper such as myself, knowing a place like Snerbville exists was like hearing someone say “That building over there is filled with zombie giraffes; wanna go check it out?”
PART THREE: I went to work at McFadden Farm
The funny thing about this one is I had already decided I was going to take the summer and hike into the mountains outside of Nevermind searching for Big Foot. I had it all planned out and everything, but then Fen Stenson stopped me in the hallway and tried to make me listen to music out of one ear bud. Fen has terrible taste in music, plus there’s no way I’m putting someone else’s ear bud in my ear. That’s almost as dumb as wiping your hand off in your own armpit.
“Hey, Barker!” Fen said. He was always in a gleeful mood. It was annoying.
I tried to keep walking but he followed me.
“I hear you’ve got the record for fastest strawberry picker at McFadden Farm,” Fen said.
It was true. I was incredibly fast. Like lightning.
“I’m not sure if I ever mentioned this before, but back home in Sweden I was a speedy picker myself. Not
Fen started explaining that Scandinavia was made up of three countries—Norway, Sweden, and Denmark—but all I could think about after that was having this bozo beat my world record. So, of course, I had to postpone my Big Foot hunt and go back to the farm. I would later discover that Fen Stenson was the single worst strawberry picker in the known universe, but by that time it was too late, because—
PART FOUR: I got promoted!
Promotions, as a general rule, are a good thing to get. Like if your title is President of the United States and then you get promoted to Master of the Universe, that’s a move in the right direction. My promotion at McFadden Farm was not what you’d call a career move. All I got was a pay cut, a new last name (McMifflin), and a chance meeting with a crew boss called Commander McMegan. I realize this is all very confusing if you haven’t read the second book of Bonkers, Attack of the Forty-Foot Chicken. Go back and read that book before you read this one! I mean I can’t stop you from reading this book if you haven’t read the first and second books of Bonkers, but I would if I could.
PART FIVE: I followed a strange kid into the night
“Commander” sounds like a bigger deal than it actually is. It’s not like she’s in charge of a starship or a planet. Commander McMegan is really just Megan, an eleven-year-old kid like me. The difference is that Megan is also the daughter of the owners of the farm, and her parents have some strange stuff going on. I can’t blame Megan for asking me to help her, given my status as a trouble-solving expert extraordinaire, but this was a very complicated situation, even for me. In the past few hours alone, the following things have happened:
I met Megan’s mom. She’s roughly the size of a Barbie doll.
I defeated a complicated security system and entered a secret barn.
Inside the barn, I saw a lot of fruit, vegetables, and animals that were the wrong size.
A tractor crashed into the barn and a giant chicken escaped into the wild. It was heading for downtown Nevermind.
You can read about all that stuff in the second book of Bonkers, Attack of the Forty-Foot Chicken, but all you really need to know is—
PART SIX: I climbed up a tree
Climbing trees is one of my specialties, so it didn’t take me very long to get up there. I was climbing the tree for a very specific reason and it wasn’t so I could get a closer look at the moon. Nope, I was climbing the tree so I could jump onto a giant chicken as it ran past.
PART SEVEN: I jumped on a giant chicken
If you’ve ever ridden a horse, I can tell you from experience, it’s not the same as riding a very large chicken. First of all, poultry don’t like being ridden. They like to shake their heads and bounce around like they’re at a rodeo, plus those feathers are slippery. It’s a real trick staying on a giant chicken for more than a few seconds, and it probably would have been better for me if I’d fallen off before the chicken fell in the hole. But that’s not what happened.
As you can plainly see, it was a very unlikely set of circumstances that led to falling in a hole while riding a giant chicken. But isn’t this the way life is? So many points along the way, I could have made a different choice, but I didn’t make different choices. I made these ones. And now I’m about to land somewhere far underground. If I have guessed correctly, that means I’ll arrive somewhere extremely unsafe, where danger lurks around every corner.
Hey, wait a second, I love dangerous and unsafe places!
Maybe I made all the right choices after all.
CHAPTER 1
TILDA HUXLEY
I see you’ve somehow figured out where I live. Goodie for you. My dad wouldn’t be happy if I revealed my name to you, or anything else about all the secret stuff going on down here. Lucky for you I am currently annoyed with my dad, so of course I’m going to tell you everything.
My name is Tilda Huxley and I’m ten years old. I’ve got pink hair and pink nails, so it’s a good thing I like pink.
Come on, I’ll show you around.
Over here I have my yellow chair. It’s my favorite thing in Snerbville. So soft! And this over here is my bed, and over here is where I have a table and my silver cup, which I enjoy drinking tea out of. I have all sorts of pictures on the walls from all over the world—no really! It’s quite the art collection. I’ve been living in Snerbville for almost a year, and I’m beginning to forget what the world outside looks like.
What’s that you say? You don’t know about Snerbville? But it’s famous! Well, at least it’s famous around here. I’m going to sit on my soft yellow chair, drink my tea, and tell you all about it. Won’t Daddy be pleased when you tell the rest of the world!
Off we go then.
Mr. Howard Huxley, who also happens to be my dad, was the founder of a secretive company called Colossal Chemistry. He knows nearly nothing about science, but he’s a masterful money-raiser for zany business ideas. Or at least he was. Now he’s hiding underground in Snerbville, on the run from the US Attorney’s office, trying to make sense of where twelve billion dollars went. Some would call my dad charming; others would say he’s a blowhard. Maybe he’s a little of both. It depends on whether or not you think he’s a criminal.
My dad followed a tried-and-true rise to fame and fortune: he sold magazines door to door between the ages of twelve and fourteen, joined a circus and mastered the art of carnival barking at the age of fifteen, and started his first company before he turned twenty. Along the way, my dad quickly discovered his secret weapon: FOMO, which stands for Fear of Missing Out. No one could put the fear of missing out into someone’s head like Howard Huxley.
As he turned forty with a string of failed businesses in the rearview mirror, Howard stumbled onto his biggest deal yet. Colossal Chemistry was big, or at least it was going to be if he had anything to say about it. But we have to back up five years for an important thing that came into the picture first, and that thing was me.
Five years prior to founding Colossal Chemistry, Howard Huxley felt that becoming a father would increase his score on the Trust Scale with potential investors by at least three points. The Trust Scale was something Howard had invented years earlier because he was smart enough to know that if someone trusts you, they will invest in your absurd idea. Like the idea to build an entire neighborhood of tree forts, which my dad raised seven million dollars for (he never got beyond the tree planting part). The Trust Scale was nine points high and his recent loss of two points due to a failed tree house operation had left Howard Huxley with a trust score of exactly two.
Fatherhood would, in theory, boost his Trust score to five, maybe even six. Unfortunately, Howard’s dating scorecard was even worse than his trust score. He’d never had the time to pursue a relationship. Empire building, it turns out, takes up most of a person’s time.
