Cherry and Atticus Save the Neighborhood

chapter 9

They finally made it to the building and there seemed to be extra security cameras.

"If we get caught again, we'll definitely be toast now." Cherry commented.

Arnold pulled out the remote control car.

"Arnold, this is no time to be playing with toy cars." Gerald scolded.

"I'm not playing, Gerald." Arnold replied, using the car to help them make it through the security system to continue their mission.

"He's going to use it to get the security camera's attention and then it will alarm the guards." Atticus told him.

"Exactly." Arnold added.

"Ugh... About another five hours..." Cherry sighed. "Can we pull it off?"

"Yeah." Patch nodded.

"Let's just find out..." Cherry sounded distant, her eyes were slowly opening and closing.

"Cherry, you okay?" Atticus asked.

"I'm getting sleepy..." Cherry groaned a little. "I may be a night owl, but it's quite late."

"Don't worry, I'm sure this won't take long." Patch said.

The guards went after the car, allowing them to sneak by, undetected.

Arnold led them to where Deep Voice told them to go and went behind the desk with them. "Deep Voice said to look in the room behind his desk."

"Where do we find a secret room?" Atticus wondered.

Cherry looked at the book shelf and took one book out, which made the shelf spin like in a haunted house.

"Should have known that it was going to do that." Patch said.

"Come on!" Cherry told them.

The others then joined her and came into a secret room. Cherry opened a secret door and there were a large number of safe deposit boxes.

"Well, we better get started." Gerald sighed.

"Where do we start?" Patch asked.

"Might as well the beginning." Arnold said, trying the key in the first box, but it didn't open, so he moved onto the next one.

Gerald kept count so they wouldn't end up using the same box twice or accidentally skipping one.

"Oi, when are we going to find the right one?" Patch asked.

"Might as well get comfortable..." Cherry mumbled.

Arnold kept checking the boxes in order, not caring how long it would take, but would hope they would have bought time.

The others were starting to fall asleep as it was after 2:00 in the morning and they had been up since after dawn.

"Which safe deposit box are we at now?" Patch groaned.

"997..." Gerald droned.

"Uh-uh..." Arnold shook his head.

"998..." Gerald still counted, but looked like he could fall asleep right now.

"Nope." Arnold replied.

"999..." Gerald nearly collapsed then.

Luckily, that actually was the right box!

"Yes!" Atticus cheered.

However, their excitement turned to instant disappointment.

"Empty?" Arnold, Gerald, Cherry, Atticus, and Patch asked.