The Pompeii Disaster Read online

  “You people are worse than animals!” David shouted at them. “Tigers are an endangered species!”

  He was about to walk toward the gate, but then he remembered that after Luke had won his fight, he’d ended it with a triumphant bat flip. So David flipped the trident up in the air and defiantly walked toward the gate.

  The trident went about ten feet up in the air.

  Then it came down.

  And it landed in the one place David didn’t want it to land.

  In the tiger.

  The tiger let out a tortured roar. So did the crowd.

  Hearing the noise, David turned around. He saw the trident sticking into the tiger’s belly. It was gasping for breath as its front and rear paws flailed around.

  “Nooooo!” David shouted, falling to his knees in horror.

  The tiger was dead.

  CHAPTER 17

  WORKING GIRLS

  WHEN WE LAST SAW ISABEL AND JULIA, THEY were chained to opposite walls of a dark, dank, dangerous dungeon, their situation hopeless. The girls were tired and hungry. Their ankles and wrists were sore from the chains that bound them. Both of them had been crying.

  “What do you think the boys are doing right now?” Isabel asked.

  The girls, of course, had no idea that David and Luke were in the amphitheater, fighting for their lives.

  “Oh, they’re probably lounging around some Roman bathhouse with girls in bikinis feeding them grapes,” said Julia. “Isn’t that what men did all the time during the Roman Empire?”

  “You’ve seen too many movies,” Isabel told her. “I don’t think the Romans even had bikinis.”

  Isabel was right. The bikini wasn’t invented until 1946, by Frenchman Louis Réard. He named it after a group of islands in the Pacific, where the United States was conducting nuclear tests. But that’s another story for another day.

  It was almost eleven o’clock. Mount Vesuvius was going to blow in an hour. But the girls didn’t know the time, because David had the timer. Julia and Isabel were dozing on and off when the dungeon door opened with a loud screech. Startled, they looked up. A woman had entered their cell.

  “Slaves!” she shouted as she went to unlock Julia’s chains. “Come with me!”

  “Well, it’s about time!” Julia said as her ankles were freed. “Those things are cutting into my skin.”

  “You’ve got to listen to us!” Isabel told the woman. “Vesuvius is going to erupt. It’s going to destroy Pompeii and all the people in it!”

  “Quiet, slave! Did someone instruct you to talk? You are not to speak unless you are spoken to.”

  The woman hustled them out of the cell and into Via dell’Abbondanza. Two angry-looking guards armed with spears were waiting there, so escaping was out of the question.

  “Where do you think they’re taking us?” Isabel whispered to Julia as they were escorted down the busy street.

  “I don’t care,” Julia replied. “Nothing could be worse than being chained up in that dungeon. Maybe they’re going to take us to one of those bathhouses. The Romans were famous for their baths, you know.”

  That was true. In fact, it’s been said that the Romans built aqueducts so the people would have fresh water to take baths. Cleanliness, as they say, is next to godliness. There were three bathhouses in Pompeii.

  But the girls were not being taken to the baths.

  They were marched down Via dell’Abbondanza and made a left at Via Stabiana, passing a bakery and a shop that sold leather goods. As they turned the corner, Isabel caught a glimpse of Mount Vesuvius in the distance. It still looked quiet and peaceful.

  Julia noticed the large clay jugs on the ground in front of many of the shops. She remembered Miss Z had talked about them. Then she saw a man walk up to one of the jugs and start peeing into it.

  “That is so gross!” she told Isabel, pointing at the man. “Do you see that? Don’t they have bathrooms here?”

  “Quiet, slaves!” barked the woman leading them. “Let’s go. In here. It is time.”

  “Huh?” Isabel said, as they approached one of the larger storefronts. “Time for what?”

  “Time for you to work,” the woman said, opening the door. “You will work in the fullery.”

  “Fullery?” Julia whispered to Isabel. “I don’t know what that means. What’s a fullery?”

  “No clue.”

  “I thought you were the smart one.”

  The sign above the front door said—in Latin—“Fullonica Stephani.” Or Stephen’s Fullery.

  “You will like it here,” the woman told Julia and Isabel. “The work is easy, and Stephen is a good man.”

  “And what if we don’t want to work?” asked Julia.

  “Slaves who do not work are put to death,” the woman said, quite matter-of-factly. “It would be wise to cooperate with Stephen.”

  Inside, the shop had beautiful tile mosaics on the floor and impressive garden scenes painted on the walls. It looked like a lovely place, actually, and the girls relaxed just a little. Maybe working in the fullery wouldn’t be too bad while they figured out a way to escape.

  The shop was mostly filled with sheets and clothes hanging up on clotheslines. Behind the counter was a heavyset shopkeeper—Stephen—and what appeared to be his customer, a short woman holding a large cloth sack. She dumped a load of clothing onto the counter.

  “I need these back by Saturday,” the woman told Stephen.

  “No problem, Mrs. Horatia.”

  “I guess a fullery is like a laundromat,” Isabel whispered to Julia.

  Isabel was right. And as Miss Z had informed them, clean clothes were important to the Romans.

  “We have to work in a laundromat?”

  “There are a lot worse places they could make us work,” Isabel whispered. “They could force us to clean out toilets.”

  The customer left and Stephen came out from behind the counter.

  “I see you have new slaves for me,” he said cheerfully to the woman who had brought the girls there. “Good, good! I need both of them immediately. We are backed up with work.”

  He gave the woman a handful of coins. She thanked him and left.

  “Come with me, slaves,” Stephen said.

  He summoned a guard with a spear to accompany him as he led the girls through a hallway to another room.

  “This shouldn’t be too bad,” Julia whispered. “How hard could it be to clean clothes?”

  “They don’t have washing machines, you know,” Isabel whispered back. “They can’t just throw their clothes in, add detergent, and push a button.”

  “Maybe they beat the clothes against rocks or something,” Julia guessed. “Isn’t that how they cleaned clothes in the old days?”

  “As soon as they’re not looking, let’s make a run for it, okay?” Isabel whispered.

  “I’m with you.”

  “What are you two whispering about, slaves?” asked Stephen.

  “Nothing.”

  The guard holding the spear looked at girls suspiciously. He was going to keep a close eye on them.

  “Welcome to my fullery,” Stephen said, spreading his arms wide when they reached the entrance to a large room. Clearly, he was proud of the business he had built.

  The walls were red and decorated with fantastic paintings of birds and animals. There were more colorful mosaics on the floor. In the corner was a large machine that looked a little like an old-time printing press, but was actually a primitive clothes dryer. You would put wet clothes into it, and then turn a screw to squeeze the water out.

  “I have other business to attend to,” Stephen told the girls. Then he addressed the guard. “Marcellus, put these slaves to work.”

  Stephen left, and the guard he called Marcellus pointed to a large square tub in the middle of the room. It was about the size of a playground sandbox, and filled about three-quarters of the way up with some kind of liquid.

  “Ugh, it smells like somebody peed in here,” Julia said, holdi
ng her nose.

  “I think somebody did pee in here,” Isabel replied.

  At that moment, another slave girl came in with a large clay jug and poured the yellow contents into the tub.

  “Ugh, gross!” exclaimed Julia. “It’s full of pee!”

  “Get to work, slaves,” said Marcellus the guard.

  “What do you want us to do?” Isabel asked.

  “Step on it,” he replied.

  “Huh?”

  The girls thought that maybe their Ear Buddies were malfunctioning. Or maybe Marcellus was joking.

  “You are to trod in the tub,” he said, raising his voice. “Idiots! Have you never worked in a fullery before?”

  The girls looked inside the tub more closely. There were clothes floating in the urine.

  “Wait, you expect us to walk around in that?” Julia asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Walk around in the pee?” added Isabel. She couldn’t believe it.

  “Yes!” Marcellus said, a little more insistently. “To get the dirt out.”

  “And the clothes are soaking in pee?” asked Julia.

  “Yes! Of course!”

  It seemed incomprehensible to the girls, but it was true. Urine has a lot of nitrogen in it. When it sits for a week or so, it becomes a rich source of ammonia, which is good for cleaning. That’s why the clay jugs were placed in front of storefronts all over Pompeii—for people to fill up with urine.

  “Are you kidding me?” Julia asked Marcellus. “You clean your clothes with . . . urine?”

  “Of course,” he replied. “What do they do with urine where you come from?”

  “We flush it down the toilet,” Julia told him. “Duh!”

  “That is a waste of good urine,” said Marcellus. “It removes the grease, oils, dirt, and other impurities. One man’s waste is another man’s treasure.”

  “Well, I’m not putting my feet into a tub of pee,” Julia said. “That’s just crazy. Come on, Isabel. Let’s go. We don’t need this.”

  She was prepared to march out in a huff, but Marcellus pulled a knife from his belt, grabbed Julia from behind, and held the knife against her neck.

  “Perhaps you would rather have your throat sliced open?” he asked. “That’s what we do to uncooperative slaves.”

  “Okay! Okay!” Julia shouted, her eyes bulging out in fear.

  “Let her go!” screamed Isabel.

  Marcellus let Julia go. The girls stepped onto the edge of the tub, holding up their frocks so they wouldn’t get wet.

  “Are you sure you don’t have any laundry detergent?” Julia asked hopefully. “Some Tide, maybe?”

  “There are tides in the ocean,” replied Marcellus.

  “A little soap?”

  “Soap?” said Marcellus. “Why would Stephen pay good money for soap when urine is free?”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Isabel said as she hesitantly dipped a toe into the urine. Reluctantly, Julia did the same.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Julia said, holding her nose.

  “This is the most disgusting thing I have ever done in my life,” Isabel said as she put her whole foot into the tub. “I may pass out.”

  “I hope I pass out,” Julia told her. “Then I won’t have to smell it anymore.”

  “Move your feet around, slaves!” instructed Marcellus. “Circulate the urine.”

  Slowly, the girls moved their feet back and forth in the tub.

  “Think of it this way,” Isabel reasoned. “The pee is usually inside our bodies, right? That doesn’t gross us out. Now it’s just outside our bodies.”

  “I’m still grossed out,” Julia replied. “I would rather clean out a toilet than stand in one!”

  “Keep moving, slaves!” shouted Marcellus. “The clothes do not clean themselves!”

  Totally disgusted, the girls marched around in the urine, being careful not to let their frocks dip below the surface. Actually, after doing that for a few minutes, they got used to the smell so it didn’t bother them as much.

  “Excuse me, how long do we have to do this?” Isabel asked.

  “Two hours,” replied Marcellus.

  “What?!” Julia exclaimed. “I’ve got news for you, sir. In less than two hours, Mount Vesuvius is going to erupt and this whole town will be buried in ash.”

  “Shut up, slave!”

  So this is where we are, reader. Things were not going very well for the Flashback Four. While Luke was fighting for his life against Vulcan, the girls were walking around in a tub full of pee. While David was running from the hungry tiger, the girls were still walking around in a tub full of pee. Soon Mount Vesuvius was going to erupt and kill everybody.

  Other than that, things were fine.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Julia whispered to Isabel as they tromped around in the tub. “Then we’ve got to find the boys.”

  Isabel looked up to see Marcellus pacing back and forth around the big room.

  “Do you have a plan?” she whispered to Julia.

  “See that door near the corner? As soon as Marcellus turns his back, let’s make a run for it.”

  Isabel glanced at the door.

  “If he catches us, he’ll kill us,” she whispered.

  “We’ve got to try something,” Julia said. “We’re going to die if we stay here.”

  “Okay, okay,” Isabel whispered. “Next time he walks over to the far corner, we go.”

  They watched out of the corners of their eyes as Marcellus paced around the room. He made his way over to the far corner, the one that was farthest from the door.

  “Now!” Julia whispered.

  But before they could make a move, the door opened. It was Stephen, the owner of the fullery. He strode over to them.

  “Ah, I see you have done good work, slaves,” he told the girls. “Now it is time for you to dye.”

  “What?!” Julia shouted. “You’re going to kill us?”

  “We stomped in the pee like we were told!” Isabel yelled. “What more do you want from us? Please don’t kill us!”

  “We’ll do anything!” Julia hollered. “We don’t want to die!”

  “Not die, idiots!” shouted Stephen. “Dye! It is time for you to dye the cloth.”

  “Oh. Never mind.”

  The Ear Buddy, apparently, did not understand homonyms.

  CHAPTER 18

  THE MAIN EVENT

  DOWN THE ROAD, IN THE AMPHITHEATER, DAVID was on his knees, desperately trying save the life of the tiger he had accidentally stabbed in the heart.

  “Nooooooo!” he kept wailing. “It was a mistake! I didn’t mean to kill him! Is there a veterinarian in the house?”

  It was very doubtful that there was a veterinarian in the house. And even if there was a veterinarian in the house, the veterinarian would probably be rooting for the tiger to die. In any case, it wasn’t going to be saved. It had already lost too much blood.

  “I killed it!” David wailed. “I can’t believe I killed it!”

  The crowd, of course, was eating it up. David put on a great show for them, and he wasn’t even trying. People were yelling, screaming, and chanting his name.

  “Hilarius! Hilarius! Hilarius!”

  Finally the gate was opened, and Fred the Red came over to pull the grief-stricken boy away from the dying tiger. He handed David a palm branch of victory and put a laurel crown on his head. Then he escorted him back to the Palestra Grande. The crowd was still on its feet.

  Luke was waiting for David. He saw how upset he was, and put his arms around his friend to comfort him.

  “It’s okay, man.”

  “I killed him,” David sobbed, “and tigers are on the endangered species list!”

  “If you hadn’t killed him, you’d be on the endangered species list,” Luke told him. “You won, and you survived! That’s the most important thing.”

  “I don’t want to live anymore,” David said, still crying. “I’ll have to live with the guilt.
”

  “Look, it was my fault,” Luke told him. “I never should have mentioned the bat flip idea.”

  “But now he’s dead,” David said, unable to control himself. “It will be on my conscience forever.”

  Luke wasn’t getting through to his friend. At that point, he knew he had to resort to desperate measures. So he slapped David in the face.

  “There isn’t gonna be a forever!” he shouted at his friend. “We gotta figure a way out of here right now. What’s done is done. So pull yourself together, dude!”

  David pulled himself together. A slap in the face will do that to you. He pulled the timer out of his pocket.

  “We have twenty-three minutes left.”

  At that point, Fred the Red came over to them. He had a big smile on his face.

  “Slaves!” he said, putting one arm around each of the boys. “Both of you were incredible out there! I can hardly believe you boys are still alive. Congratulations. Come with me.”

  “Which one?” David asked.

  “Both.”

  “Both of us?” asked Luke.

  “Yes! Oceanus and Hilarius. Both of you! Come with me.”

  In the background, alternating chants were ringing from the crowd. They wouldn’t stop.

  “Hilarius! Hilarius! Hilarius!”

  “Oceanus! Oceanus! Oceanus!”

  “Do you hear that?” asked Fred the Red as he walked them toward the gate again. “The citizens of Pompeii love you.”

  “I guess they want us to take a bow,” David said to Luke. “Like, a curtain call.”

  “You were both victorious,” Fred the Red said. “So now, of course, you must fight against each other.”

  It took a moment for those words to sink in.

  “Wait, what?” Luke asked. “But we’re friends. We can’t fight each other.”

  “Do you hear that chanting?” asked Fred the Red. “You must prove which one is the ultimate champion. The citizens demand it.”

  “No,” David told him firmly. “We’re friends. We don’t fight each other.”

  The smile vanished from Fred the Red’s face.

  “You are friends who will fight,” he insisted. “Or would you rather I send you out there with no weapons and simply release the lions? That would also be enjoyable to the crowd.”