Six others had the sense to head for more obvious cover nearby—the tunnel. But none of them made it, because the dragon burst forth with a terrible screech, splintering the sturdy timber frame and rattling the half-door that still hung from it. The Lurkers crumpled to the grass as the massive reptilian tore loose and clambered out. It reared up and bellowed, dark green and shiny in the glaring sunlight.
As the creatures cowered there at its feet, great chunks of yellowed flesh slid off their faces and arms. The faint wisps of smoke rising from their shoulders turned into thick, black, acrid fumes. There were no flames, just a lot of smoke. Waxy flesh sizzled and bubbled, and more lumps slid off foreheads and cheeks to land with heavy splats in the grass. At this stage of deterioration, evidently the sun’s rays were deadly to these non-living human facsimiles.
“This is horrible,” Liam muttered. He tried to move, but his feet refused to acknowledge the command from his brain.
Four other Lurkers lay in the grass a short distance away, clearly conscious but equally incapable of moving. In their case, it was because their limbs were too far gone. Or simply because they lacked the will.
Death by sunlight, Liam thought. It reminded him of the way vampires exploded into flame—except these imitation people were simply melting. How long would it take them to expire? Did it really hurt? And what exactly would kill them in the end? Would they still be alive even after their flesh had entirely melted away? He imagined them lying helplessly in the long grass, nothing but glistening skeletal figures held together only with Caleb’s imagination and perhaps rudimentary ligaments and muscles.
Madison tugged at his sleeve. “Liam! Why are you standing here gawking? Let’s go!”
He tore his gaze from the Lurkers and shook himself. She was right. The dragon hadn’t given up its guard duty yet, but it might attack at any moment. He turned to run . . .
. . . and spotted Caleb hurrying toward them across the field, his face red with anger. “You’re not going anywhere until you prove you know my dad!”
Chapter 7
Liam looked at Madison, wondering how they were supposed to provide evidence that they knew Barton. She looked as exasperated as he felt.
The eight-year-old boy came trotting up. Circling around, he passed under the dragon’s snout as it stood there huffing plumes of steam. He faced Liam. “Well? Show me proof.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
Caleb spread his hands. “Tell me something about him.”
Thinking hard, Liam said, “Um, kind of a thin face, beak nose, wrinkles around his eyes, thin grey hair—”
“Sounds nothing like him.”
“Well, he’s older now.”
Madison broke in. “He’s a chauffeur. Drives a big limousine. Does that help?”
This made Caleb scoff with disgust. “Nope.”
“He talked about you,” Liam said, eyeing the dragon and wondering again if he and Madison could somehow dart past it. “He told us . . . uh . . .”
“Told you what?”
The truth was, Barton hadn’t said much at all, certainly not to Liam. He decided to try a different tactic, one that might buy him a little time. “You know what? I’m not saying anything until you clean up your mess.”
Caleb’s eyes widened. “My . . . mess?”
“These poor people,” he said firmly. “There’s no way your dad will take you back until you sort this out.”
“Huh?”
Madison jumped in. “You can’t leave them like this. It’s cruel.”
She pointed to the nearest Lurker as it finally stopped writhing. It was hunched into a ball with its face turned toward them. One eye was missing, but the other was big and staring. With a strange sucking sound, the creature’s left arm came loose at the shoulder beneath the filthy long-sleeved shirt. If the Lurker stood up, the arm would likely slip right out of its sleeve and fall with a plop to the ground.
“You’ve got to fix this,” Liam said quietly, deciding that treading softly might be better than a stern approach as far as Caleb was concerned. “And then we’ll talk about your dad.”
Caleb sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “You want me to put him down,” he said flatly, looking at the badly deteriorated Lurker.
“Not just him. All of them. You’ve got to put things right around here. You can’t just leave them all here to . . . to suffer like this. You have to do something.”
“I can’t. I already told you I can’t fix things. I can only make new things.”
“Caleb—” Madison started.
Liam stepped closer to the boy, doing his best to control his trembling anger. “You said you could destroy things you’ve made. You said you used to put these people down when they started deteriorating. Isn’t that right?”
“Dad always made me,” Caleb said sullenly. “I didn’t like it.”
Liam took a deep breath. He told himself it wasn’t the boy’s fault. He was just an eight-year-old kid, after all. “I get it, Caleb. It’s a nasty business. But it’s even nastier leaving them to suffer like this.” He looked down, realizing that he still held the wrinkled piece of paper the Lurkers had given him. He held it out so Caleb could read it. “Look. They wrote this, see? They’re asking me to help them die.”
Caleb stared at the message, then looked away. “Do it, then. Help them die.”
Now Liam felt weak. It was no good asking an eight-year-old boy to murder a bunch of dying, suffering people—fake or otherwise—if he wasn’t prepared to do it himself. And he knew he couldn’t.
“I don’t even know how,” he said, spreading his hands. “How do they die? Do they have hearts and brains?”
Caleb scoffed. “Of course not. Daddy said not to give them hearts and brains. Their heads are full of mush.”
“Well, they’re pretty smart for brainless imbeciles,” Liam muttered.
Madison leaned closer to Caleb. “What can you come up with that’s . . . that’s quick and painless?”
Caleb shrugged. “A bomb? Or a gigantic alien disintegrating laser?” He thought for a moment. “Being buried under tons of rock should squish them dead. Or being eaten by my pet dragon. Or burned by my pet dragon’s super-hot fire-breath—”
“Stop,” Liam ordered. “This isn’t funny.”
The eight-year-old let out a sigh. “Do you want to leave or not?”
Liam shook his head and folded his arms. “Not until you deal with this problem. And deal with it properly.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Caleb yelled. “Most of them have run away! They could be anywhere! It’ll take ages to find ’em all now. And then there’s a bunch of ’em in the garage back at my house—Whoops.” He clapped his hand over his mouth.
“I know about them,” Liam said. “And you need to deal with them, too.”
“But—”
“Figure it out, Caleb. You’re not seeing your dad until you do.”
The boy threw up his hands and gave an exclamation of disgust. He stormed off, then changed direction and began stomping toward his dragon—and then, to Liam’s relief, changed direction again and ended up pacing aimlessly back and forth, muttering under his breath.
“Cannonball!” he yelled suddenly. He had a furious expression as he pointed toward the one-armed Lurker. It seemed to be aware it was the subject of Caleb’s attention, and it swiveled a single eyeball to look at him.
“What—?” Liam started to say.
But he got no further because a massive iron ball the size of a small car whistled through the air from somewhere above. It smashed deep into the ground, taking the Lurker with it. The impact almost threw Liam off his feet and showered him with dirt. He gasped and staggered, clutching at Madison. A crater had opened up, much wider than the iron ball itself. The Lurker had disappeared entirely, utterly pulverized.
“That did it,” Caleb said, turning to glare at Liam. “Or how about . . .” He scratched his nose, and Liam barely had time to register the faint shimmering in the a
ir before the boy turned and pointed at another Lurker. “Giant Jaws of Death!” he screamed.
The ground immediately surrounding the quivering Lurker rumbled and opened up to reveal a set of enormous molars spanning six feet. The Lurker dropped into the gaping maw, and the jaws clashed together. There was a terrible cracking sound, and Liam saw a squirt of yellow from one side of the giant mouth. The long grass thrashed to and fro as the monster beneath the ground chewed vigorously, then swallowed.
Horrified, Liam fell to his knees. “Caleb, no—”
“What’s wrong?” the boy snapped. “You wanted me to kill them, didn’t you?”
He stomped over to a third Lurker. There were only two left in this area; another six still huddled in front of the dragon. All of them had become oddly quiet by now as if anticipating their impending deaths. More than that, Liam sensed a longing.
The chosen victim reached for Caleb as he approached. Acrid smoke billowed out of its filthy sleeve, and the boy stopped and waved his hand around to clear the air. “Okay, for you I think I’ll use the giant laser gun from space.”
The fact that there was no visible sky in this world seemed irrelevant to Caleb as he squinted and concentrated. Liam saw the telltale ripple in the air. “Caleb, please, not like this! There has to be a better way.”
A blinding flash of red light burst from the direction of the sun and incinerated the Lurker. It was certainly effective—the creature’s legs and waist turned to ash in a split second, and Liam was reminded of the Gorvian time grubs he’d encountered last weekend. As the ray of death faded, some of the ash blew away in the draft from the nearby tunnel. Unfortunately, the ray had only taken out half the Lurker; the remaining half remained alive and unharmed. It let out a low, mournful wail.
“Caleb!” Liam yelled.
“No problem, I’ve got this,” the boy muttered.
The bright red column of light flashed again, this time incinerating the top half of the Lurker. Liam blinked rapidly and sidled over, amazement overcoming his fear and disgust. The two separate blasts of light had left a section of blackened grass shaped like a number 8. It was filled with gray ash and nothing more.
Madison had her hands over her face. “There has to be a better way,” she murmured.
“How?” Caleb complained. He gestured all around. “There’s only seven left here. Most have run off to the village to hide. And what about the ones in the garage near my house? They’re everywhere.” He stomped a foot in the dirt, looking more like a petulant child than ever before. “Maybe I should just drop a few bombs! I don’t care about it anymore. I don’t care if the whole world is flattened. I might as well—”
He paused to digest his own words, and a look of intense excitement came over his face as he raised his eyes and stared all around. A terrible sense of dread filled Liam. The boy was contemplating something big.
Quietly, Liam began to edge toward the tunnel, pulling Madison with him. The dragon continued to lie there, now half asleep, but the idea of going near those massive jaws paled in comparison to sticking around and witnessing whatever Caleb did next.
“We need to go,” he whispered to Madison. “Right now.”
Chapter 8
Liam and Madison sidled closer to the dragon, both keenly aware of its sleepy but baleful stare. Up close, however, the monster somehow didn’t seem quite as authentic with its oddly regular scales and bright-white teeth and claws. Like a giant animated model, it looked a little too perfect to be the real deal.
Well, duh, Liam thought. It’s a dragon, a creature from myth and legend.
It stank of onions. Yellow slime dribbled down its flanks from open wounds where it had torn its way out of the tunnel.
Still, the creature wasn’t so far gone that it couldn’t rise up and bite him in half without a moment’s hesitation, and it probably would have done so already if Caleb hadn’t been around. Like a highly trained guard dog, the dragon glared with suspicion and sniffed with disdain as they tiptoed past. Obviously waiting for an instruction, its muscles tightened, and enormous claws dug into the dirt. The slightest nod from Caleb was all it needed to strike.
But Caleb was busy.
Liam and Madison edged past the dragon toward the tunnel. The pit of darkness still had half a trap door hanging from the side, attached only by a single sturdy hinge. Tied to the door’s wrought-iron handle, a thin rope lay in the long grass, recently untied from the speeder. Liam stepped over it, his eyes on the tunnel. “What’s Caleb doing back there?” he whispered, not wanting to turn around.
“I don’t know,” Madison answered him, looking over her shoulder. “He’s mumbling. The air is shimmering.”
“That’s a bad sign.”
Madison paused, her eyes narrowed. “I’ve never seen the air shimmer so much before.”
Trying to ignore the dragon, Liam turned to look. An ever-widening ripple distorted his view of the terrain. The village shimmered like a reflection in a pond. The distant hills wobbled, and the upside-down world above their heads jiggled.
An odd tingling sensation crept up Liam’s fingers to his shoulders, then across his chest. Even the dragon seemed to be aware of something strange, and it lifted its head and sniffed the air. “Let’s go,” Liam urged.
Without warning, he shoved Madison over the tunnel’s timber threshold. She gave a yelp and tumbled down inside.
Liam prepared to jump—but first, he glanced back at Caleb.
An intense feeling of dizziness washed over him.
“Whoa!” he gasped as he tilted backward and scrabbled for something to hold onto.
At the same time, Caleb gave a shrill giggle and tore past him. The boy was moving so fast that he seemed to fly into the tunnel with a tremendous bound, leaving Liam to fall on his rear end in the flattened ferns.
The dragon hauled itself to its feet, sniffing the air and growling. Then it flapped its wings and took off, rising rapidly and soaring away. Something had spooked it.
Liam swayed, his sense of balance inexplicably screwed up—and he hadn’t even entered the tunnel yet. He ended up on hands and knees as an unseen force threatened to tug him away from the trap door. Glancing up, he stared in amazement at the tall, rickety bungee tower the dragon had been sleeping next to. The stretchy cord was slowly being dragged by the same unseen force that tugged on Liam. Like the hand of a clock that had been on the six, the cord slowly rose to the right until it reached the five . . . then the four . . .
He suddenly figured it out.
Caleb had switched off the gravity.
Abruptly, Liam lost his balance again and started rolling helplessly across the field in the direction of the village. Rolling down a steep hill, he thought in a panic. Without Caleb’s false gravity, the ground literally tilted under him as Earth’s true gravity took hold. He was dimly aware of Lurkers tumbling with him. One fell apart, limbs and chunks of yellow flesh flying off in all directions. The land speeder spun away out of control.
Liam yelled in panic, grabbing at the long grass as he tumbled.
The rope! It still lay in the grass to his right. He lunged and gripped it with both hands, quickly arresting his fall.
Suddenly, his senses rebooted and everything clarified. The grassy field he’d walked across earlier was slowly becoming a sheer cliff face. The tunnel entrance now lay above him, an opening in the side of Caleb’s world, and Liam dangled on a rope still attached to the wrought-iron handle of the busted trap door.
He swung from side to side, hanging on for dear life.
The bungee tower stuck out sideways, its cord also hanging straight down. The village he’d explored appeared to be fixed to the side of the curving landscape below, the structures collapsing as he gawked in amazement.
“Climb!” Madison screamed from above.
With his arms aching, Liam scanned the grassy wall above and spotted Madison peering over the edge of the wooden frame, her head and shoulders poking out of the tunnel. Her black hair hung down towar
d him as she glanced around in wide-eyed shock.
“Climb!” she screamed again. “You’ve got to hurry! Caleb turned off the gravity!”
No kidding, he thought.
Anything she yelled after that was drowned out by a rising cacophony of cracks and rumbles from all around . . .
Chapter 9
Ant froze as the tunnel began to shake. Dust trickled down on him. He felt sure the entire place was about to cave in and crush him, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. And yet . . .
Was that light ahead?
It had been an unnerving journey. He’d walked for ages in the light of endless gas lamps. Then they’d inexplicably snuffed out, and he’d fumbled to switch on his own battery-powered lantern, grateful he’d brought it. He’d heard distant rumbling sounds echoing along the tunnel, followed by occasional unearthly screeches. The urge to turn and head back up the tunnel had almost overpowered him, but the thought of his friends in danger forced him onward down the gentle slope, grinding his teeth together and trying to control his thudding heart.
And now this. An earthquake? Another sinkhole?
The light he saw ahead had nothing to do with gas lamps. This was a square of white daylight. The earthquake—or whatever it was—rumbled up the tunnel toward him, and he again fought the urge to flee.
A shriek caused him to gasp, and he almost dropped his lantern. The shriek came again, and this time he recognized the voice.
Madison!
He broke into a run, stumbling over the loose rubble and occasional bits of twisted metal. What had she been yelling? It had sounded like “Climb!” and then something else he couldn’t make out. In any case, she had to be yelling to Liam.
Power of Imagination Page 4
