The Candy Shop War, Vol. 2: Arcade Catastrophe by Brandon Mull Read Free Book Online

studied them as best she could. The girl had longish brown hair and tan skin. The boy had messy blond hair. They were looking around as if to make sure they were unobserved. Summer was about to comment that they were acting suspicious when the two kids jumped over the Arcadeland fence with a single smooth leap. The side of the batting cages would have shielded them from onlookers inside Arcadeland. But Summer saw the furtive act perfectly.
    “Arcadeland must be handing out magic candy,” Summer guessed.
    “What do we do?” Pigeon asked.
    “Those two probably know a lot about what’s going on here.”
    “Do we go down there?”
    Summer frowned. “We need information if we’re going to help John. We shouldn’t risk letting them get away without finding out more about them.”
    Pigeon gave a nod. “Then we better hurry.”
    *****
    Nate paused beside Trevor after entering Arcadeland. He had never been inside such a vast arcade before. Beyond the tiled lobby he could see traditional standing video games, driving games, shooting games, plus diverse games where a player could win tickets.
    “This place is big,” Trevor murmured.
    “Let’s check it out,” Nate said.
    For the first few minutes, Nate and Trevor roamed the aisles of games, surveying the different ways to spend tokens. Some of the shooting games looked really cool. One let two players hunt dinosaurs together. Another offered the chance to roam a zombie-infested mansion armed with machine guns. A third turned the player into the gunner atop an armored vehicle that prowled around a battlefield.
    Trevor seemed extra interested in the racing games. You could ride a motorcycle that you turned by rocking it from side to side. A long row of car racing games used steering wheels to put the player in the driver’s seat. Most featured exotic courses. Some of them were apparently set in the future. One unusual racing game allowed the player to pedal a bike that powered a one-man airship.
    Nate didn’t spend a lot of time on the traditional video games. There were some slick fighting games, and a few classic games like Gauntlet, Donkey Kong, and Pac-Man. But he could play games like that at home.
    Most of the arcade was devoted to games that allowed the player to win tickets. Nate found Skee-Ball, basketball, and Whac-A-Mole. Some of the games seemed like pure chance, where you spun a big prize wheel or pressed a button to drop a ball onto a spinning platform riddled with holes.
    On one side of the arcade they found a coin-operated shooting gallery depicting a scene from the Old West, with lots of little targets spaced around the area. They paused to watch people shooting. One target made the mannequin at the piano start playing. Another made the spittoon rattle. A third made an owl flap its wings and spin its head around.
    “Let’s get some tokens,” Trevor suggested.
    Nate led the way to a token machine. He inserted a twenty, and coins came clinking out like he’d won a jackpot. “Is this enough for now?” Nate asked.
    “Do one more for me,” Trevor said. “They want us to be thorough—that’ll take some money.”
    Nate fed the machine a second twenty and let Trevor collect the tokens. While Trevor scooped them out, Nate scanned the room. There were people around, but the arcade wasn’t packed. He supposed it probably got more crowded in the evenings and on weekends.
    “Where do you want to start?” Trevor asked.
    “Too many choices—it’s hard to pick.”
    “Do you want to win tickets?”
    “I don’t know,” Nate said. “Let’s see what prizes they have.”
    They wandered over to the redemption counter, where various items were on display alongside the quantity of tickets required to claim them. The prizes ranged from cheap little army men and gummy bracelets for 5 tickets up to sound systems and guitars for 15,000.
    “This is such a rip-off,” Trevor said. “The cheap things are junk, and you could buy the cool stuff for so much less