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The Big Bang

The Big Bang has an awesome mix of sports, suspense, secret passages, and some nasty bad guys. Anyone who likes sports and mystery stories will snap this book off the shelf. I love how Mr. Holland wrote this story with lots of thrilling chases, suspenseful moments, and mysterious deaths. You never know how it will end until you finish the book! All in all, The Big Bang is one of my favorite books ever: The only thing missing is a sequel!

— Samuel Ickovics Thorpe, Age 10

This book caught my attention from the first page and then I cou1dn't put it down. The story was so thrilling it kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. I really like how Robert Holland combines sports and mystery into a fast-paced suspenseful story. After I finished, I really wished the story had kept on going. The Big Bang is another great book to add to Robert Holland's collection.

— Bcbby Gecrgenes, Age 11

Chapter One

The Big Bang!

I was asleep. My younger brother, Luke, and my little sister, Lizzie, were asleep. My parents were asleep. The dog and the cat were asleep. And then I woke, sitting straight up in bed with the back of my neck crawling the way it does when something’s wrong and something had to be wrong because Tarpit, our black lab, was barking like he’d found a bear in the kitchen. He was angry and desperate and I had never heard him bark that way. Then he carried it up the stairs and hurled himself against the door to my parent’s bedroom and suddenly Dad started shouting down the hall.

"GET UP! GET UP! GRAB SOME CLOTHES! GRAB SOME SHOES! RUN! RUN FOR THE BACK DOOR!"

My heart was beating so hard I thought it would leap out of my chest and my little sister Lizzie was screaming and Dad kept shouting instructions: "DON’T TURN ON ANY LIGHTS!" while Mom screeched at us to "RUN! RUN! RUN!"

And run we did, as fast as we could, down the stairs, barefoot, still in our pajamas, our clothes and shoes tucked under an arm and as I passed through the kitchen I spotted the cat on the counter and I grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and then held the screen door for Mom and Luke and Dad, who was carrying Lizzie. Then I ran and Tarpit came rushing past, nothing more than a shadow in the dark.

"RUN FOR THE TREES! HEAD FOR THE BIG OAK!" Dad shouted and we dashed barefoot across the cold wet lawn like a bunch of track stars. That tree is over two hundred feet from the house but it looked like it was a mile away in the dark.

"FASTER!" Dad shouted. ‘RUN FASTER!"

Dad with Lizzie and Mom and Luke got there at the same time while I was only a step behind.

"GET BEHIND THE TREE!" Dad shouted.

We did and he made us huddle close together and then he sort of draped himself over us, all the while holding onto Tarpit by his collar.

"COVER YOUR EARS! CLOSE YOUR EYES!" He shouted.

What came next was a bang, a big bang, a really big . . . .

Bang

. . . an ear-splitting hammer of a sound somewhere in size between two high speed trains crashing and the thunder blast that comes from a nearby lightning strike. Let me be clear. Despite the title of this chapter, I’m not talking about the theory of how the Universe started, but how our lives changed forever.

I know that sounds a little over the top, but I gotta tell you when your house blows up, and you get out with seconds to spare, it changes things. Before that night I had not thought of the world as being particularly dangerous. After it, I spent most of my waking hours on red alert.

The explosion was followed by a fireball that looked like pictures of the atomic bomb tests they used to hold in Nevada, rising probably a couple of hundred feet into the air.

"Pike, get your head down," Dad said. The debris followed: thousands of bricks coming at us like missiles, crashing into the trees all around us, and though not one hit us, hundreds of them thudded like cannonballs against the trunk of the tree and fell harmlessly to the ground.

As abruptly as it had started, the debris stopped falling and the only sound was the roar of the fire. I had never heard anything like the roar of that fire and I was shaking and I couldn’t stop shaking and both Lizzie and Luke were crying. In the distance I could hear fire sirens and then I felt Dad stand up. "Stay here," he said.

I looked up as he eased his head around the tree, waiting for him to give the all clear. But it was several minutes before he stepped into the open and looked back at us.

"You can come out," he said. "We need to get around to the front so the firemen know there was no one inside." He looked back at the fire and then pointed off to his right. "Follow me. We have to stay well away from the heat." He pointed to the trees closer to the house, all of them burning.

"Beyond those trees we’re okay."

There was no way I could have anticipated the destruction. The house was simply not there. And yet, astonishingly, the garage, though it was leaning and one wall was on fire, had survived the blast.

The lawn was littered with big chunks of wood and plaster and bricks, some of it burning, some just smoking. Individual bricks had flown outward in a circle and as we reached the street we could see holes in the house across the street, and the trees that lined the street on our side were fully aflame, looking like big candied apples someone had set afire.

It reminded me of the bombing raid films of England during World War II or maybe the special effects that fill up movies and make them interesting. I knew right then that it would be a while before I could enjoy any more of those scenes in a movie. I was still shaking and Mom, Luke, and Lizzie looked like they were in shock. Dad seemed incredibly calm, talking to us in a low steady voice. But that was Dad. He never lost it, he never panicked.

Fortunately for the neighbors to the sides and rear, the houses are spaced well apart and there are barriers of large trees. What had been our wonderful brick house had been reduced to a gigantic bonfire with flames leaping fifty feet into the air. Everything we owned except what we had carried out of the house was gone.

Dad pulled his jeans on over his pajamas, then pushed his feet into his boat shoes. "Wait here," he said, "I have to talk to the firemen." He grinned. "You probably ought to get dressed."

He was gone for perhaps five minutes and during that time we got dressed. For reasons I’ll never understand, once I put my shoes on, the shaking stopped. Lizzie had stopped crying and was clinging to her cat while Luke and I petted Tarpit and stared in awe at the amount of destruction and the huge crowd of people who had gathered.

Dad came back and stood with us. "Everyone okay?"

"What happened to our house?" Lizzie asked.

"It was a gas explosion," he said. "Tarpit smelled it and when he woke me up I smelled it. There must have been a leak in the basement. All it took was a spark somewhere to set it off. That’s why I told you not to turn on any lights."

"How did Tarpit know it was dangerous?" I asked, "Can a dog know that?"

"I’d guess it was just something that didn’t belong."

"Well," I said, "at least this is one homework excuse they’re gonna believe."

I didn’t think it was all that funny but suddenly everyone was laughing and I think maybe that was because we were all there, alive, no one hurt, and we had the best dog the world has ever known.

I stood with Luke, watching the fire, which still burned hard and hot despite the water being pumped onto it and not until the gas company got there and shut off the line did the firemen begin to gain control.

We had finally begun to calm down and people nearby were talking and that’s when the gas tank on one of the two cars in the garage exploded, followed seconds later by the second car. There was a lot of screaming and yelling as people ran for cover to escape any debris but the force of the explosion had gone out the back and gradually people came back to stand and watch and talk among themselves, as the fireman turned their hoses onto the second fire.

"Dad," Luke asked, "how come the stuff from the garage didn’t come this way?"

Dad shrugged. "It’s just a guess," he said, "but I think it’s because the cars were backed in and the gas tanks were surrounded on three sides by the brick walls and the cars themselves probably forced the explosion backward."

Suddenly Tarpit drifted up out of the dark and sat in front of us. He had something in his mouth and I reached out and he dropped it into my hand. It was a cell phone.

"Look, Dad, Tarpit found your Blackberry."

He touched the screen and it lit up. "I can’t believe it still works. It was in my car." He squatted down and began scratching and petting Tarpit. "Good boy! How did you ever find this?"

Tarpit was just over a year old so even if he had turned out to be a talking dog it would have been a little early. He made up for his silence by wagging his tail.

Dad picked a number from his file and hit the auto dial. Then he turned and walked off a way so no one could hear. It was only a minute or so before he came back.

More emergency people were arriving and the chief of police spotted us and walked our way. I could tell he was counting heads.

"I see everyone got out, Judge?" he said.

Dad shook his head. "Even saved the cat." He reached down and scratched Tarpit behind the ears. "The dog woke us. He must have smelled the gas."

"Lucky break there, all right." He looked around at us. "And none of you even got hurt?"

"Dad got us behind the tree," I said. "The press is gonna want to talk to you," the chief said.

Dad shook his head. "No, George. No press."

"Well, you’ll have to make a statement, Judge."

"The U.S. Marshal Service is sending some people. Until we find out what happened here, I can’t talk to anyone."

Suddenly it connected. "I’ll keep them away."

"Thanks."

Dad waited until the chief was out of range and then turned toward us. "This is probably gonna sound pretty weird," he said, "but shortly some men will arrive in two Suburbans. They’re federal marshals and they’ll be taking us to a safe location until they figure out what happened here."

"Is that because of your job?" I asked.

He nodded. "I’m afraid so, Pike. I get to try a lot of pretty nasty people."

About then Mr. and Mrs. Bachman showed up. There are lots of nice people in this world, but none so nice as the Bachmans. They were like grandparents in residence.

"Oh, I am so relieved to see all of you," Mrs. Bachman said. "We were so afraid ...." Suddenly she smiled. "My word, you even managed to save Lizzie’s cat." She shook her head. "It was a miracle. An absolute miracle."

It’s the kind of thing adults say at times like that, and I’d never thought much about it before, but suddenly it seemed to me as if miracles had nothing to do with our escape. It was Tarpit and all he’d needed was instinct.

I wondered if my instincts worked that well. None of us had smelled the gas until Tarpit woke us. But that also led me back to the question I’d asked Dad. How had Tarpit known it was dangerous?

If you were talking about a human, you’d say, well, he smelled the gas and then rushed around shouting that everyone needed to get out of the house.

Was that much different from what Tarpit had done?

Clearly, I had a lot to learn and it seemed to me that the only way to learn was to watch everything that dog did and try to figure out why he did it.

"You need a place, Mead, we have plenty of room."

"Thanks Henry, thanks very much. It’s taken care of."

"Good," Henry said. "Still, anything we can do ...."

"I appreciate that, Henry. Thanks."

What was unspoken was that Henry was aware of what had just happened and what it meant and he had still offered us a place to stay, despite the danger.

They had also provided a return to reality. Standing there, talking about what had happened got us back into the real world. We were, in fact, alive, unhurt, still a complete family.

The first Suburban came right up over the curb and drove to where we stood. The guy who climbed out of the passenger side was about Dad’s age, somewhere in his forties.

"Glad to see you all in one piece," he said.

He and Dad shook hands. "Thanks, Carl. And thanks for getting here so quickly."

"There’s room for you all in one car, and the other one will bring up the rear." He looked down and then back up. "We need to get going."

Dad nodded and we walked to the Suburban and climbed in, having no idea where we were going. Luke and I climbed into the rear seat with Tarpit between us and we looked out the back window as the place where we had lived for the past three years got smaller and smaller and then we turned the corner and it was gone, though in the night sky we could still see the glow from all the lights on the fire trucks and the remains of the dying fire.

We turned and faced forward. "Is it just me or is this a little weird?" Luke asked.

"It’s weird. Right up there with zombie movies," I said.

"Well, maybe not that weird," he said.

I chuckled. "Nothing weirder than zombie movies."

I dropped my hand onto Tarpit’s huge black head and ran it over the smooth fur. No, I thought, this was weirder by a lot. It had started out with a big bang and now, like the pieces of the universe, we were drifting outward into the dark.

But what I really wanted to know was who put the magic in my boat shoes.

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