Kingdom Keepers Boxed Set

by Ridley Pearson

  He waited to make sure Maybeck had received the messages.

  mybest: got it. . i hope.

  THE APES AND MONKEYS ENCIRCLED FINN, closing around him like a net. How simple to cross over briefly into his DHI and just walk right through that hairy line, but it was not to be: he was terrified. He wasn’t going to cross over on his own.

  He spun, looking for the weak link in the circle. He considered charging some of the smaller monkeys, breaking the line there and running for it. But they all were ferociously fast on their feet and, at the moment, baring their teeth in a display of aggression and anger.

  He caught sight of Jez as she reached Charlene. Excitedly, the two girls worked it out to where Charlene was leaning her back against the wall, and the nimble Jez now climbed up the stilts—using them as a ladder—toward Charlene’s waiting hand. Finn looked away as the fingers of the two met, confident that Charlene would get Jez up and over to the other side.

  “Over here!” a high-pitched voice called out.

  Finn heard guests shout: “Check it out!” “Look at this!” “There are kids in with the tigers!”

  Where had she come from? Finn wondered. It was Amanda. She was inside the tiger yard, the huge, prowling cat to her left, the circle of monkeys directly in front of her.

  Disney Security would be on them in minutes. They had to get Jez—and themselves—out before they were either eaten by the tigers or caught by Security.

  The other two cats arrived at the same time. They, too, began to circle, along with the tiger that escaped the hatch—a wider circle than the monkeys, one that included Amanda.

  The escaped tiger still confused Finn: how had it gotten into the tunnel in the first place? Was the lower yard hatch open? If so, who had opened it?

  Only the prowling tigress that had emerged from the shadows remained on her own, majestically moving with long, confident strides, restlessly back and forth. She seemed to be agitated, studying the commotion in her yard, calculating a strike.

  Several of the monkeys spun around, distracted by Amanda, and broke their chain. Finn took advantage of the distraction and shot for the opening.

  The two charging tigers turned at the last minute, now aiming for Amanda.

  Finn took two steps toward her, intending to defend her, but then witnessed her leaving the ground. She levitated, floating higher and higher. The monkeys, carried by their own momentum, ran right through the space she had occupied. The two charging tigers leaped into the air, reaching their claws toward her. One caught the leg of her jeans, but there was no sound of tearing fabric. No scream.

  The leaping tiger flew through the air and landed with a roll.

  The slinking tigress sat back on her haunches and sprang for the charging tiger. It looked as if the tigress were trying to defend Amanda. The two tigers growled at the tigress and the three cats began to circle each other.

  Ignored, Amanda lowered herself to the grass.

  “The wall!” Finn called out to Amanda as he raised his stick toward the remaining two monkeys.

  Amanda sprinted toward Charlene.

  Finn turned his back in their direction, battling most of the monkeys, who darted about him trying to sink their teeth into his legs. He knocked them back with his stick, but apparently they barely felt it.

  Looking over the heads of the monkeys, Finn saw the tigress swiping her huge claws at the other two grand cats. It looked as if the cats made contact, but none of them reeled with pain—they held their ground.

  Charlene let out a squeal as Amanda climbed up her stilts; her hand had become caught between a stilt and the wall.

  With that squeal, all three cats turned. One minute fighting each other; the next, acting like curious cats. They clearly saw the monkeys, then Finn, and finally the girl in the distance clambering up a wall.

  They charged.

  Finn had his hands full with the monkeys. He had not an ounce of strength nor a second of time to deal with three enormous cats barreling down toward him.

  This is it, he thought. It was too late to turn and run. Too late to escape.

  The cats were lightning fast. They seemed to pull the earth, and Finn with it, dragging him toward them. Without looking, the monkeys knew. They darted to their left, removing themselves from the tigers’ line of sight.

  Finn readied his pathetic stick; it was all the defense he had. He was going to be eaten alive.

  The two smaller tigers leaped into the air when just five yards away, perfectly calculating the distance. They would land on Finn, crushing him, then snap his neck with their powerful jaws and start the feast.

  Finn braced for the end.

  PHILBY’S AND WAYNE’S AVATARS HAD, only five minutes earlier, moved around the right wall of the Dino Institute, as it appeared on the virtual schematics.

  philitup: if you helped create the place, how about a little hint of how to reach that room?

  Near the south wall of the institute, the purple cables terminated. The blueprint showed a series of walls around them, but no door. So was the server in a closet? A workspace? The ceiling? The hiding place in the floor?

  [ ]: computers came way after my time. I have no idea where that is.

  philitup: none? are you sure? they don’t need much space, but it has to be a cool room, and they require a lot of cabling, so they would be over a tunnel or sewer, or—

  [ ]: storm sewers.

  Wayne’s avatar lifted its arm to point.

  [ ]: I remember a meeting, years ago, where routing data lines over the storm sewer pipes was discussed, storm sewers carry the rainwater out of the park, the sewer lines are in maintenance conduits throughout the park.

  philitup: but this is a server they want to hide, that they don’t want anyone to find.

  [ ]: the employee bathroom in the Dino Institute is way too cold, and every bathroom has drains, right? some drains feed the storm sewers.

  Philby grabbed hold of the DS. It was worth a try.

  philitup: dhi server is in an employee bathroom close 2 the south wall.

  mybest: on our way.

  philitup: wayne and i will try 2 cut the cables, u try 2 find server.

  Philby looked back at the VMK screen and, as he did, the screen popped and sparkled. It occurred to him that someone could be monitoring them. The Overtakers could know that he and Wayne were online. Could they trace their locations? If so, both he and Wayne were at great risk.

  philitup: hurry up! we have to cut the cables.

  Wayne’s avatar rushed to keep up with Philby. It forced Wayne to keep his hands on the mouse and off the keyboard: he couldn’t type a message as long as Philby kept him moving.

  They traveled around the corner of the institute and back to the catwalk that carried the data cables. Philby struck the purple cables with his sword. Once…twice…three times. All the cables were cut. They immediately turned gray—the data stream was dead.

  Why wasn’t Wayne helping? Philby turned his avatar to look.

  Wayne’s avatar wasn’t moving.

  philitup: come on! hurry!

  The white-haired avatar just stood there not doing anything.

  Philby wished he could scream at Wayne, instead of just typing. Why wasn’t the old guy following him?

  Then the impossible happened: Wayne’s avatar dissolved.

  MAYBECK AND WILLA occupied the backseat of one of the exploration vehicles inside the Dino Institute. The front seat stood empty, and given the size of the crowd lined up for the ride, this should have told them something; but they’d been too preoccupied with Philby’s instructions to pay much attention to anything beyond looking for doors offering employees backstage access.

  The ride was dark and very cold, with stunningly real dinosaurs appearing at every turn. Asteroids fell to Earth in a shower of fiber optics. The vehicle rounded a long turn. The prehistoric creatures looked up and turned toward the truck.

  “How are we going to do this?” Willa asked Maybeck in a whisper. “We can’t jum
p from the car without setting off the alarms.”

  “We’ll find a way backstage,” Maybeck promised. “The trick is to know where we’re going.” He indicated the part of the ride to their right. “This section is all interior to the track. Philby said a workshop or bathroom. Those rooms are going to be in spaces between the ride and the exterior walls—or currently to our left.”

  “Are you sure about that?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure about anything,” he conceded.

  The next scene showed a tyrannosaurus eating a lizard.

  “It’s creepy the way their eyes move,” Willa hissed. “It feels like they’re looking right at—”

  But her words were cut off as the dinosaur’s giant tail swiped over the engine of the open-topped vehicle. Maybeck reached out and pulled Willa down onto him a fraction of a second before the massive tail nearly beheaded her. The tail broke some equipment off the vehicle, and it tumbled to the track.

  Maybeck dared to sneak a look and pushed Willa back up.

  “Was that…supposed to happen?” she gasped.

  Maybeck pulled at a lap belt at his waist; then he tried Willa’s. The belts wouldn’t release—they were locked shut. The kids couldn’t jump out of the vehicle even if they’d wanted to.

  “I don’t think so. No,” Maybeck answered. “I think that was intended for us. Heads up!”

  He glanced back. No vehicles in sight in either direction.

  The ride was designed so that no car ever saw another. There was no use calling out for help.

  “You remember Small World?” he asked her.

  “I was on Winnie the Pooh with Charlene,” Willa answered. “We nearly drowned, don’t forget.”

  “I haven’t forgotten. My point is: I think this is like that.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  If they could have jumped from the car, the sensors would have stopped the ride, but the locked seat belts prevented their escape.

  Suddenly, a pterodactyl shot down at them from out of the pitch-black ceiling. It was dark and angular, with a wingspan of over six feet. With its sharp talons extended, it descended too quickly for Maybeck to react, catching him by the wrist as he shielded his face from the attack. At the moment the talon grabbed hold of him, his seat belt released, the timing too perfect to be coincidental. The bird locked on to his forearm and dragged him up and out of the vehicle.

  Willa screamed, spun, and grabbed him by the boots. Maybeck was now stretched between the overhead bird and Willa, still locked in her seat. Neither was willing to let go. He groaned in agony—it felt like every joint was separating simultaneously.

  He twisted his forearm to the left then quickly to the right, breaking the bird’s grip on him. The pterdoactyl’s long beak bent back to peck at Maybeck, but too late. Maybeck reached out and snapped the bird’s leg at the knee. The creature cried out, flapped its wings, and was absorbed into the darkness of the ceiling.

  Was it alive?

  Willa pulled him down into the backseat, but he avoided the seat belt.

  The pterodcactyl’s broken leg in hand, Maybeck studied it. An electrical wire extended from the broken knee.

  “You’re bleeding,” she said.

  He studied the three holes in his skin. “It doesn’t hurt much. I’m fine.”

  “It got you.”

  “Dang right it did.” Only Maybeck didn’t say ‘dang.’

  “This ride is trying to hurt us!”

  “You think?” he snapped sarcastically. “You’re not surprised by that, are you? There are sensors on every ride. Probably cameras, too. Throw in a little artificial intelligence, and how hard can it be to program a server to defend itself?”

  “You think the server is doing this?”

  “I think it knows we mean business. It has every right to be scared. I’m going to fry its innards if—no, when!—we find it.”

  “But how—?” Willa began. She cut herself off as Maybeck stood up in the seat, grabbed a light, and turned it to show them something of the track in front of them.

  Back behind the jungle plants, he illuminated a black door and a disguised device protruding from beside it.

  “Ten-to-one that’s a card reader,” Maybeck said. “That’s our way in.”

  “But I’m stuck,” Willa reminded him, indicating the locked seat belt. She pulled and squirmed, but there wasn’t any way she was going to slip out of its grip.

  Maybeck glanced around sharply. The car had already moved them past the black door. They were rounding a turn toward the end of the ride. They would be caught and—at a minimum—thrown out of the Park. If the Overtakers got hold of them, then things were about to get a lot worse.

  “There has to be an emergency release,” Maybeck said, trying to think like Philby. What would Philby do?

  “If a car stops,” she said. “Like a fire or something…”

  “The belts would release!” Maybeck nearly shouted, agreeing with her.

  “We’re going to have to move fast,” he said. A rhinoceroslike dinosaur stepped out of the scene up ahead and lowered its head. It was going to head-butt them.

  Maybeck jumped from the vehicle.

  Nothing happened.

  He’d expected flashing lights and sirens and for the vehicle to stop. But the car continued forward, aimed directly at the armor-clad beast with its head lowered.

  Maybeck tore loose a branch from a tree. He hurried to the front of the research vehicle and swung the branch repeatedly at the vehicle’s bumper and grille.

  “Terry!” Willa shouted, calling Maybeck by his first name.

  “There has to be…” Maybeck muttered to himself as he continued to bash the vehicle while he backed up toward the waiting dinosaur. His pants belt snagged on something on the front grille. If the beast charged now, it would crush him against the car.

  Again, he smacked the front of the car.

  It stopped.

  He’d knocked out a front sensor.

  Struggling to free his hooked belt, he turned and glanced over his shoulder. The dinosaur broke loose from his scene—the thing was definitely alive!—and charged.

  With the stopping of the vehicle, an alarm now sounded throughout the building.

  Willa’s seat belt released, freeing her.

  She leaped from the backseat. “The black door!” Maybeck called out calmly. Again he wrestled with his belt. Now he fiddled to unstrap it: he was stuck.

  The dinosaur snorted and charged down the track at him. Only at the last second did Maybeck spot a small pool of oil along the track—one of the vehicles ahead of him was leaking oil. As he noticed it, he elected to stay perfectly still.

  “MAYBECK!” Willa cried out.

  His belt still caught, Maybeck turned around and faced the charging animal.

  His belt buckle came loose and slipped out of the loops on his pants.

  He dropped to the floor.

  The dinosaur slipped in the oil and crashed into the front of the vehicle, demolishing the rover into a twisted V of bent metal.

  Maybeck was lying directly between the dinosaur’s legs.

  He scrambled to his feet.

  Willa held the black door open.

  Maybeck ran like he’d never run. The dinosaur turned and followed, not slowed by the crushing impact with the vehicle.

  Maybeck literally dove through the black door. Willa swung it shut. The wall shook as the dinosaur impacted the metal door and concrete fire wall. Willa took Maybeck by the hand and pulled him to his feet.

  “You could have been killed.”

  “I saw that his legs were like stumps. As long as I stayed between them…”

  “That was too big a risk to take.”

  “It’s not like I had forever to think about it,” he replied.

  He looked around. They were in a long, curving hallway. There were no markings on the gray walls. Overhead, hundreds of wires were carried in a kind of metal ladder that hung from the ceiling; it ran in both directi
ons and out of sight. Among the wires were dozens of blue ones.

  “We follow the wires,” Maybeck said.

  “But in which direction?”

  “This way,” Maybeck said.

  “But how do you know?” Willa asked.

  “I don’t,” he said. “Some things we’ve just got to take on faith.”

  “Faith? This is you speaking? What have you done with the real Maybeck?”

  “Give it a rest.”

  They were hurrying now, the alarm still sounding. Perhaps employees all rushed to assigned stations in emergencies—or to unload guests. Whatever the case, the hallway was empty.

  Maybeck moved not with his eye down the hall, but in the tangle of wires overhead. Willa did much the same.

  “There!” she said, pointing out a massive group of blue wires running from the wire carrier through a hole above a door to their right.

  Maybeck swung open the door.

  Workbenches ran along the far wall, covered with spare parts, soldering guns, tools, and hydraulics. In the middle of the space to their left was a metal rack, floor-to-ceiling shelving holding dozens of computer servers, network hubs, and surge suppressors.

  “We’ve got it!” Willa proclaimed.

  “No!” Maybeck countered. “It can’t be this easy. Philby said we should look for a closet or a bathroom.”

  “But these are computer servers. It could easily be—”

  “No, it couldn’t be here. This ride uses all these computers. The nerds that work on them would notice a server that didn’t belong. Philby’s got to be right.”

  “Then where?”

  “The wires,” Maybeck said, hurrying around the back side of the rack of computers. There had to be several hundred wires—both blue and black—the blue wires interconnecting the servers and the hubs. The black wires ran to power supplies. Some of the groups of wires were well-organized and held together by plastic ties; others had been added hastily and were in a tangled clump of spaghetti.

  Maybeck looked this all over and said, “We’re not going to find it here.”

  “How can you tell that?” Willa asked.