For Nikki Mock Janet Vaughan and all the kids at Hammond Hill where NERDS was born Elementary in North Augusta South Carolina the place
The goon woke in a hospital with a bandage wrapped tightly around his ribs and an IV dripping sedatives into a vein in his arm Though he could not remember how he had been injured or how long he had been unconscious his first thought was to call the office and find someone to cover his shifts He had a busy week of beating people to a bloody pulp and his victims weren’t going to punch themselves in the face He couldn’t leave his bosses in the lurch He was evil but he was professional Perhaps it was his dedication to his work that had built him such an impressive resume fifteen broken jaws fifty-seven legs a hundred arms and more noses than he could count He had knocked out thousands of teeth pushed a few people off bridges and once buried a guy in concrete up to his neck He had been nominated for Goon of the Year nine times by OUCH Organization of United Criminals and Henchman and had won its highest honor the Brass Knuckle seven times At the office he showed up early and left late He had his lunch on the job frequently beating people as he ate his peanut-butter-and
jelly sandwiches You didn’t get on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list by taking a sick day He leaned over to the IV line that fed his body sedatives and yanked out the needle He couldn’t have predicted how much it would sting The pain brought back a wave of memories The goon had been in the employ of an eleven-year-old evil mastermind who wore a black mask with a white skull painted on it It had been a fiasco Simon as he called himself had made some rookie mistakes that had led to bigger problems His first mistake was working with a mad scientist named Dr Jigsaw a kook with a doomsday device that was supposed to pull Earth’s continents back together Second the kid had spent a fortune building a secret fortress at the North Pole for said kook Naturally some heroes came along and destroyed the place just before the overly complicated plan could be unleashed on the world which was Simon’s third-biggest blunder he should have killed the heroes as soon as they arrived Instead he took them hostage Even babies know that heroes have a tendency to escape just in time and ruin a villain’s plan Sure enough the heroes destroyed Dr Jigsaw’s continental-shift machine During this calamity something fell on the goon Then everything went black and he woke up in this hospital Now the goon’s cell phone rang Someone had set it on the table next to him and as he reached for it he realized he was missing a hand In its place was a hook The goon studied it for a moment then the closest thing to a smile his mouth had ever produced appeared on his face Most people would have been devastated to see a menacing metal hook where their hand
