Shell Shocked Read Online Free

sixty-year-old women with pop bottle bottoms for glasses, then we’ve pretty well won this war.”
    â€œA spy could be anybody. You know that,” I said. “But it’s not just her, it’s everybody.”
    â€œYeah, and if you think about it, there should be enemy agents here,” Jack said. “This is the biggest munitions plant in the entire British Commonwealth, so you have to figure that the Nazis want to infiltrate it. Hitler would love to have this plant destroyed.”
    That wasn’t simply us making things up. Agents whowere training at Camp X tried to break into the plant all the time to test security. We knew that from experience, because we’d infiltrated the plant once.
    Bill had asked us to do it as part of a test. Really, it was a game he played with the head of security at the plant, Mr. Granger. It happened the first time our mother worked there. We told security that she’d forgotten her lunch, and then we walked right in. If the guards had bothered to look inside the lunch bag they’d have seen that we were carrying a chunk of mud that was supposed to look like some kind of plastic explosive and an alarm clock that was a pretend detonator. We walked right up to Mr. Granger in his office and handed it to him. At the time it seemed like a game. Now it was plain scary. If we could do that, who else could get in?
    â€œDo you think that they might call on us again?” I asked.
    â€œBill?”
    â€œOf course Bill. Or Little Bill.” Little Bill was like the top spy, the guy in charge of everything, not only at Camp X but everywhere. “Do you think they might want us for another mission?”
    Jack shrugged. “On one hand, I could see them asking us to try to smuggle a fake bomb in again.”
    â€œThat would make sense. We could do that.”
    â€œWe could, if they asked us,” Jack agreed. “But I’m thinking that probably they’re not going to ask us to do anything ever again.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œWell, they probably don’t use kids very often.”
    â€œThey used us twice, well, really three times,” I said.
    â€œBut it was always sort of by accident after we’d stumbled into something that we shouldn’t have. And I sort of hope we don’t stumble into anything here.”
    â€œYou do?”
    â€œDon’t look so surprised,” Jack said. “It’s probably good for us to go back to being kids again.”
    I understood what he was saying, but I didn’t know if it was possible for us ever to be just kids again.
    â€œI’m spending so much time thinking about things like that, it’s like nothing at school seems important,” I said. “That’s why I can’t seem to concentrate.”
    â€œWell, you wouldn’t have fallen asleep in my class this afternoon,” Jack said. “We’re studying World War I.”
    â€œI guess that would be more interesting than math.”
    â€œ Everything is more interesting than math. Do you know what they used to call that war?” Jack asked.
    â€œThe Great War,” I said, feeling smugly satisfied.
    â€œThat was one of the names. They also called it ‘the War to End All Wars.’”
    I laughed. “That didn’t work.”
    â€œIt was the War to End All Wars for less than twenty years,” Jack said. “Today, we learned about the Halifax Explosion.”
    I gave him a questioning look.
    â€œIt happened in 1917. Like now, back then they made explosives and ammunition here in Canada and shipped them over to Europe for the war. There was this ship in the Halifax harbour and it was loaded with explosives, ammunition, and it was hit by another ship. It caught fire.”
    â€œWow, that would have been something to see.”
    â€œThat was part of the problem. Hundreds and hundreds of people came to see it burning in the harbour. And then, when it exploded, the impact