Finn stops again, looks down at Jess. Then he turns and continues climbing, reaching what feels like the hundredth catwalk. A few feet in front of him, the surface is wet, slick. Finn forces his eyes up. Through an open hatch at the top of a ladder, he sees gray sky.
To one side stands a massive leg covered in brown fur. Above the leg, a curled horn comes into view.
What’s up there needs no introduction.
DISPATCHING THE LAST of the Thugs, Maybeck looks first to his wound, then up in time to see the Partners statue, hanging from the end of the crane’s boom, swing into place atop Big Thunder. He’s too late!
As he sprints to attack the crane operator, there’s a loud pop! Lacking all clear because of his wound, Maybeck climbs the machine to the operator’s booth. As he’s reaching for the door handle, the entire crane shifts. He falls, but saves himself by snagging a handrail. His head thrown back, he sees the Partners statue swinging in space once again.
He looks down to see it was the rats chewing through one of the crane’s tires that disrupted the OT’s work. The statue swings away from its intended lightning-rod perch.
Nearby, Charlene scales the rock like a kid on a playground climbing gym. This is home to her, hanging precariously by a few fingers forty feet above certain death. The red spire shoots straight up; it’s among the most dangerous free climbs she’s attempted. Angling her body unnaturally, she wedges a heel and finds purchase: another finger grip. Flex. Push. Pull. Up she travels, slow as a caterpillar, determined as a Kingdom Keeper. Her destination is not the summit, but a small nose of rock facing the Big Thunder Trail.
But when the crane shifts, the Partners statue swings like a wrecking ball or a pendulum, first out and away from her, and then back, directly toward her.
Charlene loosens her grip, dropping fast. She squeezes the cable hard to brake. Above, the bronze Mickey and Walt collide with her former resting place; fragments of rock rain down. Two more swings. Two more collisions. She dares to steal a look upward, blinking away the sifting debris and dust, to see the crane lifting the statue into position again.
She climbs recklessly fast, paying no mind to the sixty feet of open air now beneath her. The statue’s smashing into the rock face has made the handholds easier, bigger. Reaching the damaged area, Charlene moves faster still to pull herself onto a protrusion of rock, a narrow shelf immediately above, tucking her feet in tight and squatting on the bridge of the sculpted figure’s giant stone nose.
In front of her, the cable holding the statue has steadied. She stretches out to reach it, but it lingers just beyond her grasp: she’s going to have to jump.
* * *
Maybeck can’t believe his eyes: Charlene must have some kind of death wish. The Partners statue looks as if it’s about to crush her. Cursing beneath his breath, he storms the crane operator’s booth, swinging open the door.
It’s Judge Doom at the controls. Amanda’s push has broken his jaw, shifting it miserably to the left. He looks like a discarded action figure under a Christmas tree. His left leg isn’t much better; twisted and ungainly, it looks more like the number three than a limb. But his hands work the seven hydraulic levers before him like those of a church organist playing Bach. Two television monitors, one in each corner of the booth’s front window, show closed-circuit camera views from the boom’s upper and lower sheaves. Doom pulls a lever, hoisting the statue higher. Another tug sends the jib forward and thrusts out the upper sheave’s pulley.
If Charlene jumps now, he knows, it will be out into space.
Maybeck grabs the top sill like a pull-up bar and kicks Doom squarely in the jaw. Then he lunges for the middle lever and pulls back.
The statue drops. It’s in free fall.
* * *
Charlene, airborne, collides with the hoist rope, a steel cable that was not there a fraction of a second before. She grabs hold and slides down like a firefighter, her hologram hands suffering severe rope burns due to her partial all clear. Her shoes slam into the hook, now a chain’s length from the top of Walt Disney’s metal hair.
The crane’s hook contains an emergency release side lever, once brightly red-and-white striped, the paint now chipped. Charlene wraps her legs around the cable, prepared to invert herself.
As she does, the statue falls a second time.
* * *
Philby signals Amanda from the hut end of the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad Bridge. He’s banging a rock against the rail in an effort to loosen the joint, something Amanda told him was not a problem. Philby wouldn’t listen.
Amanda, at the far end of the expanse, near the miner’s cabin entrance to the ride, spots the lantern headlamp of a railroad handcar in the darkness of the tunnel, immediately behind Philby, where he cannot see it.
Without all the noise, he might have heard it; without the near constant shifting of the ground from the thunderclaps overhead, he might have felt it. Two miners face each other on opposite sides of the handcar, taking turns pumping its teeter-totter–like mechanism up and down to drive it along. They aren’t on a joy ride. As she watches the handcar speed up, Amanda knows with sickening certainty that their purpose is to reach Philby.
Instead of running away from the bridge as he should, Philby makes the mistake of running toward her across the bridge. If she pushes now, she’ll probably kill Philby, who can’t possibly be all clear.
The miners pump faster, closing on her friend.
In a moment of absolute clarity, Amanda knows Philby will not reach her before the handcar knocks him from the bridge.
“P—h—i—l—b—y!” she screams.
The handcar reaches him, shoving Philby off the bridge and sending him plummeting toward the bed of rocks below.
As Philby begins his fall he’s overcome with fear. Without a speck of his body all clear, he falls like a stone. His one success is his ability to keep from screaming. Keepers don’t scream.
He doesn’t want to die. He has a lot to live for, starting with the friends he doesn’t think he can live without. A family he loves. Willa. A computer that kicks butt. But while he’s not as heartless as the Dillard, Philby’s no romantic. It’s going to hurt when he lands. He’s going to suffer. It’s not the death he would have chosen.
It feels like the tug of gravity is sucking him down like the Devil himself drawing breath from Hell. Spread out beneath Philby is the kingdom he has sworn to defend in flames, under the control of barbarians armed with black magic. He has devoted six years of his life to a singular aim, a goal with no personal gain—and that has made it the best ride ever. He and these friends have struggled to advance an ideal. He can live with that.
Or die with it, as the case may be.
* * *
Amanda sees Philby slipping away from her, claimed by gravity. Her heart sinks with him.
Her life so far has been full of opposites. Other people have families; she was claimed by an institution. Other people have hobbies; she has a power she can’t escape. Other people have sisters; she has a fellow stranger who feels like her twin.
No thought, only pure instinct, motivates what Amanda does next. Pivoting on her heels, she reverses herself and pushes. She faces a four-story mountain of rock that isn’t going to budge. The force of her thrust drives her straight back, as if a rocket had hit her in the stomach. She is propelled through space like a crash-test dummy thrown from a test car, except that she holds both hands palms down, facing out, ready for impact.
There!
Keepers don’t scream.
She feels Philby’s hand smack hers. He squeezes like there’s no tomorrow, which, technically, there may not be. She carries him with her, his body outstretched, parallel to the ground, buckled forward as if she were working out on a rowing machine. Together, hand in hand, they sail backward and slam into a patch of sand between a small cluster of rocks. A puff of dust rises.
Philby coughs. Amanda wipes tears from her eyes before he notices. Her back to the mountain, she gives another h
uge shove with her palms. There’s the sound of an explosion, but not sparks, no flames.
The bridge is spun like a turnstile, away from the moorings that hold it to the mountain.
The bridge collapses in an epic crash that challenges the shattering heavens for bragging rights. The miners and their car sail through the air to a dire fate awaiting them below.
The Overtakers’ improvised grounding rod is broken.
* * *
Maybeck puts his fist where his feet were, punching his clenched hand into Doom’s ruined jaw and separating its one remaining workable joint. The force of his punch leaves Doom’s head swinging like a rattan porch chair in a warm summer breeze.
Simultaneously, Maybeck uses his remarkable agility to work the third of the seven levers with his foot, dipping the crane’s jib into the rock face of Big Thunder Mountain. His ankle manages to trigger the winding drum’s payout of hoist rope, lowering Charlene, whose remarkable bravery has freed the Partners statue, allowing it to free-fall to the ground below, where it squishes two Thuggee warriors flat like bugs.
Then Charlene and Maybeck jump at the same instant, whether by instinct or good judgment, neither knows.
A lightning strike hits the uplifted crane. A wild, rollicking jolt of several million volts of electricity races the length of the crane’s boom and, finding no ground, builds to bursting on the crane’s slewing platform. The crane melts like chocolate left in the sun and sags until nothing but a molten blob of metal remains.
Somewhere in the sludge is the Judge—doomed.
FINN HOLDS MICKEY BACK. The legend wants desperately to climb the ladder, though he is well aware of what waits above them, but Finn and the Keepers have other plans. Pushing Mickey’s sorcerer’s cap out of his own eyes, Finn climbs. Violet’s hands are nearly on his heels, she is climbing so close behind him.
“The Queen! Tia Dalma! Where are they?” he shouts to Willa, far below. Were the witches caught and killed in the Skyway Station battle? It’s the last anyone has seen of them. If Finn doesn’t return, he wants Willa thinking ahead.
He doesn’t anticipate the cloven hoof in his face. One moment he’s climbing, the next, the ladder is knocked out from under him. The steel structure, bolted to concrete, crumples as if made of mere paper. Grabbing at the leg attached to the hoof, Finn finds himself on an express elevator to the penthouse, up and through the hatch. He lets go, the beast that carried him there none the wiser. Hitting the ground, he lands behind Chernabog, crouched on his hands and knees. Violet’s not here. She must have fallen back to the catwalk, Finn realizes.
There’s a thundering sound, but it isn’t thunder. The beast stomps one hoof angrily. The steel hatch jumps off the deck, lifted by the vibration, and slams shut. The sound it makes draws Chernabog’s attention; as he turns, he spots the parasite he carried aloft: Finn. The beast cocks his head at Finn and widens his black eyes, which are as big and as opaque as bowling balls. Hot, sour air blasts from his wet nose as he coughs and snorts.
Then, with a roar, Chernabog swipes at Finn as if he were a housefly. Finn ducks and feints to his right. The sunken deck at the top of the Matterhorn is instantly transformed into a boxing ring. Chernabog draws back a fist, the wing attached behind his shoulder trailing and echoing the windup, and swings. Finn dives between the beast’s legs, rolls, and comes to standing mere inches away. If Chernabog steps back, Finn will be crushed or forced over the side to his death.
Finn steals a look down, past the edge of the sunken platform upon which they’re standing, which has a surface rubberized against weather and is barely bigger than a backyard wading pool. The Matterhorn’s icy white peak sits like a scoop of ice cream atop the cone of the mountain’s jagged brown slopes. It’s a long way down to concrete and asphalt.
In the second or two he has bought himself, Finn manages to go all clear. He attempts his spin technique, moving through Chernabog as the beast turns to search for him. Again, Finn comes out behind his opponent.
Not seeing Finn, Chernabog pivots back. Finn carefully times when to step through the beast. He succeeds undetected. Sensing the ruse this time, the beast turns yet again. He’s quicker and cleverer than Finn anticipated. A flash of panic steals his all clear, and Finn bounces into, then off the beast’s leg.
With another roar that seems to shake the heavens, Chernabog slams Finn with one mighty fist. But one wing tip snags on the lip of the sunken platform, reducing the force of the blow—it’s not a square hit. Finn spins like a top and collapses, still conscious.
Chernabog raises his hoof and stomps. Finn crawls out of the way at the last possible second. The beast rears back to kick Finn, but Finn hauls the escape hatch open. Chernabog’s hoof cracks into the steel plate; the resulting collision sounds like a ten-car pileup. The enormous creature staggers back, growling in pain.
Seizing his advantage, Finn charges, his arms outstretched like lances, and slams into Chernabog. He might as well have hit a brick wall. Finn falls; Chernabog barely totters. But totter he does, and his sore hoof doesn’t help. Finn lunges again, angrily this time, desperately. He is fighting not only for his self-preservation; he is fighting for Wayne’s sake too.
Chernabog hits him cleanly this time, first with his hand, then with the tip of one wing, which catapults the boy off the platform, sending him sliding down the mountain’s icy face. The surface is real ice, not fiberglass. It’s real, and this beast means to kill him.
Finn claws his way up the snow, grabs a handful, and hurls a half-packed snowball at Chernabog. The beast tries to block it, but the ice ball explodes on contact, and the monster is blinded, at least for the moment.
Scurrying now, slipping and falling, but managing still to climb back up toward the platform, Finn throws more ice and snow into the beast’s oversize eyes. Chernabog’s reaction is to wrap his wings around himself and step forward.
Finn slips over the edge and back onto the sunken platform, scooping and throwing snowballs all the while, but the monster’s wings open with a snap, revealing a red-eyed bull’s head that is the closest thing to a devil’s face Finn has ever seen. Chernabog takes two thunderous steps and knocks the hatch shut again, eliminating any chance for Finn’s escape.
In the distance, an explosion rocks Big Thunder Mountain. Like a crippled shooting star, the crane lifts and then falls, consumed in flames. Chernabog bellows his displeasure, making the Matterhorn shake with his cries.
Maleficent in her dragon form was vulnerable to Finn’s attack. But she had outgrown a confined space, trapping herself and giving Finn the upper hand—literally: he tore her heart out with his hologram hand.
There will be no such simple end with Chernabog. The beast is free, he’s angry, and the flesh-eating monster now towers over Finn. His massive black leathery shoulders cap bulging arm muscles and humanlike hands—but with long claws, bigger than lawn rakes. His blank, unforgiving eyes radiate a bull’s brute ignorance and rage.
“I know you can hear me!” Finn shouts at Chernabog, who responds with an inquisitive look. Finn wants to cheer; he’s won the beast’s attention. “You cannot win! You kill us, and more will take our place. You destroy the park, another will be built.”
Chernabog swings, but simply voicing his convictions has returned Finn to all clear. The surge of energy is brief, but potent. The beast staggers, thrown off balance by the force of his blow, which fails to connect, sweeping through Finn’s torso.
“I’m not here,” Finn says. “I’m magic. I’m everything you’re not!”
Another swipe, another miss.
For the first time, Finn sees real puzzlement in the gaping black eyes. “There’s no such thing as evil here!” he hollers. “No room for it in this place. In Disneyland, evil never wins. How can you beat the laws of nature?”
They are frozen, staring at one another, gazes locked. Finn wishes for Amanda’s power to push. He wishes for Amanda. Chernabog deserves to go over the side, or worse. The beast snorts, his eyes aflame.
He can’t decide if he’s addressing a bull with a man’s body or a man with a bull’s head. He realizes that even if he manages to push the beast over the side, Chernabog will simply spread his wings and fly or glide to the ground. Finn eyes the closed hatch.
Another flash of lightning is followed almost instantaneously by a deafening crack of thunder. The storm is directly overhead.
“It starts and ends in lightning.”
Jess said that. Had the Keepers misunderstood her? They had thought she meant that the park would be ended—destroyed—by lightning, and although that still appears to have been the Overtakers’ aim, Finn wonders if there was a second meaning, one they missed.
Chernabog leans toward Finn, letting loose a moaning roar that sounds like a bull’s grunting complaint and a man’s pent-up frustration in one. And in that instant, Finn looks for something metal to attract the lightning. If this is his moment, if this is what Wayne meant to show him, that some things require the ultimate sacrifice, then he has no intention of going alone. If he’s to die, his death has to mean something, it has to count. Again, Wayne’s last words sound in his ears: “It’s about time.”
“For what?” Finn shouts, but he’s afraid of the answer. He already knows.
Chernabog startles at Finn’s outburst. The boy dives to one side, biting back a cry as a stream of green bile fills the space where he stood a second before. The bile boils and bubbles on the rubber surface, melting away a section of the mountain. Finn forgot the beast could do things like that.
Finn rolls over and jumps to his feet. Chernabog shifts his weight, eyeing the hatch, apparently to be sure that it is still closed. He fakes Finn out, swiping at him with a casual gesture, as if merely fanning the air, catching the boy in the ribs and tossing him aside.
Landing hard, Finn looks down—and feels his stomach fall. He’s once again over the edge of the recessed platform, hanging by his fingertips. In the flashing lightning, looking up at his wrists, he sees Wayne’s watch, reflecting the storm in tiny bursts of light.
Kingdom Keepers VII Page 50
