Free The Goonies by James Kahn Page B

was at least a couple seconds before I heard the water hit bottom.
    Chunk started freakin' out about breakin' something else, but I told him to shut up. “Shhh, listen,” I said.
    A slow, echoing trickle.
    “Big wow,” said Brand.
    “No, it's deep!” I said. Nobody else got it. “There must be some kind of opening or another room or something down there.…”
    We ran to the fireplace. Brand reached down to pull a log out of the way and burned his hand and yelped and dropped the log.
    “Brand, you sure you're not adopted?” I said. “Are we from the same family? C'mon, you're embarrassin' me.” I noticed that
     Andy was smiling.
    Brand gave me a look but didn't hit me. He just took off his shirt, partly to wrap his hand with it and partly, I think, to
     show off his pecs to Andy. Anyway, he pulled all the hot logs away and pushed all the ashes to the side, so theblackened grating in the floor was exposed. He pulled it out.
    A few feet below we could see a second floor of old crumbling bricks and earth. Brand stuck his foot down there and began
     stompin' on it to see how solid it was. Right away it started to give, like it would maybe break through. He kept kickin'.
    People react to nervousness in different ways. I just get more nervous, or sometimes I get an asthmatic attack. Mouth mouths
     off. Data fixates on his gadgets. And Chunk gets hungry.
    So about now is when Chunk noticed the freezer in the wall. “Hey, I wonder if they got Chipwiches,” he said with his special
     food-glow smile. He walked over to it and pulled on the handle, but it wouldn't budge.
    Brand kept stompin' the false floor under the fireplace. I could see the bricks starting to crumble and give way. All of a
     sudden there was a crunch, and his foot broke through, up to his knee. There was an opening beneath the bricks.
    We helped Brand up just as a loud whirring noise filled the room. Data, drawn to the biggest gadget around, had turned on
     the printing press,
    We walked over to him as he was picking up the last page rolling off. It was a freshly printed sheet of perfect counterfeit
     fifty-dollar bills.
    “Bogus bills,” said Brand. “Check it out,” said Data, handing me the page.
    “I knew those people were from the ozone.”
    Stef pulled the news photo of our hosts off the wall. “Oh, God, I knew I recognized these faces,” she said. “This is the Fratelli
     mob. They were on the news. Jake just broke out of prison, and there was this high-speed car chase, and they're wanted everywhere,
     and—
    “See! You guys never believe me,” said Chunk, stilltrying to get the freezer open. “And now look what you got yourselves into.…”
    Suddenly the freezer door flew open.
    And standing inside was a dead body.
    Frozen solid, his eyes wide-open. With a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. And an FBI badge pinned to his lapel.
    He was one of the two guys in dark suits we saw go in the restaurant earlier in the day. He was bound and gagged now, and
     halfway zipped into a green plastic bag. The one that wouldn't fit into the trunk.
    And then, like it was in slow motion or something, the body fell forward and hit the floor. Almost hit Chunk—he was so petrified
     he didn't move—until the body crashed to the cement, and then we all moved, and I mean fast.
    Out the door, down the hall, up the stairs. But not very far up the stairs. Because in the lounge above us we heard voices.
    The Fratellis were home.
    And then, at the top of the staircase, we heard the basement door open.
    We turned without a word and ran back to the counterfeiting room and shut the door.
    I took a suck on my inhaler.
    Chunk was shivering. “Mommy! Daddy! Uncle Wormer!” Over and over. I remember that's also the way he calmed himself down the
     night after he snuck in to see
Friday the 13th, Part II
.
    “Oh, Jesus,” whispered Andy, and crossed herself.
    Chunk saw that, and I guess he figured he'd try anything if it would help, but he was Jewish, so he