KK02 - Disney at Dawn

by Ridley Pearson

  The giant yeti was awake now, towering over them all, eyes blinking. Finn did not recoil. He could not picture Wayne and the other Imagineers building creatures designed to harm them.

  The roller coaster sped closer.

  “I will kill you,” Maleficent said, “when you are no longer of use to me.” She bent backward and looked up at the hairy creature above her. “When Lord Chernabog has no further use for you.” She let out a laugh—a bloodcurdling cackle—that for the first time challenged Finn’s DHI status. His feet and hands grew cold, and it took all his will to overcome this poison and return to his full DHI.

  The beast had the reaction time of a snake. One moment Finn was standing on the stairs. The next, the yeti had him by the legs and was swinging him overhead.

  His legs…not the legs of his DHI. Amanda and Jez jumped out from their hiding places and Jez shouted, “Let him go!”

  “Ah!” Maleficent cried out. “If it isn’t the Fairlies.”

  Amanda craned forward, her neck thrust out. Maleficent knew way too much.

  Finn knew the secret to his own survival was to push away his fear, but being swung at thirty miles an hour over the head of a forty-foot-tall giant proved a difficult challenge.

  Maleficent suddenly floated—levitated—off the platform, clearly, nothing she’d planned for herself, for she flailed her legs and arms, dog paddling like a kid struggling to swim for the first time.

  “You put me down, child!” she roared.

  She hurled a ball of flame at Amanda, who leaned slightly left, allowing the asteroid to pass. It exploded into the Himalayas.

  “PUT HIM DOWN!” cried out Amanda, “OR I WILL DROP YOU AS YOU WISH!”

  Maleficent moved like a puppet twenty feet to the left. Now there was nothing but a sixty-foot fall to concrete beneath her.

  Finn felt the tingling return, and, as it did, the yeti’s hand closed shut through his body—nothing but light. Finn clamored up the beast’s arm toward its massive head. The yeti swiped at him, but again his hand passed through Finn’s DHI, unable to touch him.

  He caught a glimpse of Maleficent as she began to transform into a crow. But as she did, Amanda released her and the green-skinned creature fell fifteen feet straight down before stopping in midair.

  “You try that again,” Amanda warned, and I’ll drop you before you have the chance.

  Maleficent looked down and seemed to consider her odds. Then she looked back at Amanda.

  “You harm me, you little tart, and your friend will never see his precious Wayne again!”

  With the mention of Wayne, Finn slipped. He fell off the yeti’s shoulder, and the sensation immediately removed his DHI. He slid down the side of the creature, grasping at the matted gray hair and somehow controlling his fall. As he reached the yeti’s leg, it moved. Then the other. The giant’s feet broke free of the platform where it had stood for several years. The entire building shook.

  A series of screams was followed by the roller coaster shooting up at them through the darkness. Philby, Maybeck, and Willa zoomed past—backward—and out of sight.

  Maybeck waved at Maleficent.

  The witch proclaimed: “You will bring me the Stonecutter’s Quill, or you will never see the white-haired man again.”

  At that moment, the yeti began to change. The hair was sucked inside its arms, turning the gray skin smooth; the legs and arms shrank, and the neck grew thinner, while the head also lost its hair and sprouted horns. The giant creature had been reduced to a figure much greater than Maleficent, but no longer a thirty-foot-high beast. Horns sprouted, while black webbing formed under the thing’s arms like…bat wings.

  Chernabog.

  Finn heard the roller coaster slowing in the distance. It would be returning—and when it did, he, Amanda, and Jez needed to be on it.

  The pen, Finn realized. The Stonecutter’s Quill was the pen Walt had used to imagine the first plans of the Parks. It had demonstrated great powers the one and only time Finn had seen it used. Powers, he assumed, that could be put to evil use as easily as they had been to good.

  A wall of tension formed between Amanda and Maleficent. The witch produced another ball of fire, but this time Amanda levitated it as well. It hovered next to the witch, burning hotly and illuminating her green face.

  “You will regret this, little one,” Maleficent muttered, clearly afraid of her own fire. “You are playing with things you know nothing about.”

  She grew the head of a vulture. Wings began to sprout.

  Amanda released her. Again, Maleficent fell abruptly, before slowly being carried aloft. Evidence of the vulture was gone; the green-skinned fairy hovering over the precipitous fall.

  The strain on Amanda was evident. She had quickly grown pale, her body now shaking.

  Finn saw that Maleficent was merely playing for time. She knew Amanda couldn’t keep this up forever.

  “Release Wayne!” Finn called out, “or she’ll drop you.

  “The Quill,” Maleficent said, “or you’ll never see him alive again.” She looked over at Finn, who held to Chernabog rather than drop to the platform where the creature might squash him like a bug.

  Amanda’s strength gave out, and she collapsed into Jez’s arms.

  “You harm any one of us and you will never see that pen!” Finn shouted. He let go, jumped, slid down the mountain slope, and aimed straight for the two girls, hoping his timing was right, for he could see the roller coaster from the corner of his eye. Chernabog stepped forward, raising his arms in defiance. But he was too late.

  Finn’s wild slide down the mountainside connected with both girls at the exact moment the roller coaster arrived. He stretched out his arms and caught both Amanda and Jez, his momentum carrying all three of them headfirst into the passing roller coaster. They tumbled into a middle car.

  But the safety bars on the ride were already set, having been locked at the start; and, as the cars gained substantial speed, Finn held on to the weakened Amanda as Jez reached out to cling to the car, and with Maybeck, Philby Charlene, and Willa calling out from the back, the Kingdom Keepers plummeted down into the dark.

  65

  CHERNABOG MOVED WITH surprising agility for something that was a beastly demon with a pair of batlike wings the size of boat sails.

  To the surprise of all, Chernabog made no attempt to stop the Kingdom Keepers. He flew toward the bottom of the ride. For once in his life Finn willed a roller coaster to go even faster.

  He did not want to lose them.

  Finn had ridden on Expedition Everest before. Within a matter of seconds they would be thrown into a spiral that would crush them against each other if they couldn’t hold on tightly.

  Holding on with one hand each, he and Jez wrapped their free arms around the other’s shoulders and, with Amanda pinned between them, leaned forward, braced for the spinout.

  Expedition Everest roared into its climactic spiral, the G-force driving Finn and Jez to their right, their hands slipping along the restraining bars. The force nearly threw them from the car, but together Finn and Jez managed to keep Amanda pinned in, and soon the roller coaster began to slow to a stop.

  As it came to rest, the restraining bars released, and Maybeck and the others hurried to join Finn, Amanda, and Jez.

  Finn left Amanda in the care of her sister and led the others through the building and out an enormous garage door that was standing wide open.

  They ran out into the street where they caught a final glimpse of the back of the ice truck as it sped away.

  “What now?” a gasping Philby said, clutching his sides.

  “They got away,” Finn said.

  “But we can’t just let them go!” Maybeck said.

  “We got Jez back,” Finn said, “and we crippled the second server.” He looked at each one of his friends. “I think it’s safe to say that Jez and Amanda are now officially Kingdom Keepers.”

  The others nodded.

  “We have work to do,” Willa mumbled
.

  “Let’s get some sleep,” Finn said. His suggestion met with no resistance.

  66

  THE STORY MADE THE morning news: a refrigerator truck, being driven poorly, had been pulled over by the local police. The officer swore that he’d been knocked over when he’d gone to open the back of the truck, and that two creatures had been seen hurrying away. He refused to describe them. He said only that they had traveled in the general direction of Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme park, and that from everything he’d seen, that was where they belonged.

  For nearly two weeks, Finn—who’d been grounded for a month—sneaked onto VMK the way Wayne had told him. He hoped to find Wayne by typing the name into a text screen. When the white-haired avatar failed to appear, Finn organized the other kids, most of whom were also currently grounded.

  So it was that exactly a month after the event at Expedition Everest, Finn went to sleep fully dressed, holding a small black remote button in his right hand.

  As he fell asleep that night, he intentionally dreamed of the Magic Kingdom, and he awakened there on a Park bench, his body glowing under the moonlight.

  He was at the hub near the entrance, at the end of Main Street, USA.

  Soon, the other Kingdom Keepers joined him. Only Charlene was still in her nightgown, having forgotten to change into street clothes before going to sleep. Or maybe this was how she wanted to dress.

  The five headed up and into the small apartment above the firehouse in the Magic Kingdom. It was exactly twelve midnight.

  This was Wayne’s apartment. Most had visited it before. There was incredibly sour milk in the refrigerator and food that now wore a coat of green fuzz—Wayne had not been here in a very long time.

  They searched for over an hour for the Stonecutter’s Quill, but to no avail. If Wayne had hidden it, he’d hidden it well.

  “What now?” Charlene asked.

  “Is there any choice?” Finn asked.

  “But without the pen,” Philby said, “what leverage do we have? We can’t win his release without that pen.”

  “We’ll think of something,” Finn said.

  “Or maybe Jez will dream it,” said Charlene, “and give us more clues to follow.”

  “The point is, we did save Jez, and we pretty much saved the Animal Kingdom from being overrun by DHIs. We can’t be giving DHIs a bad name, after all.”

  They laughed. Five shimmering kids, glowing as they enjoyed a rare moment of levity.

  “Maleficent used us to bring Wayne out of hiding,” Finn said. “We failed him. And although we don’t know enough about Chernabog, we’ve seen his power. And I have a hunch that the bat with green wings was him all along, although I’m not sure how to explain that.”

  “We know that even Maleficent cannot transform herself for very long,” Philby said. “Especially in this heat. She and her animal army may have been planning to take over AK. They had the ice truck as their backup, in case they failed. It was only when we crashed the server that she resorted to moving Chernabog. What’s strange is that if they hadn’t captured Jez, if she hadn’t been in that tunnel to have that daydream, we might never have known what Maleficent was planning, might never have been there when she was freeing Chernabog.”

  “I think it was intended—us being there. I think if we’d failed to defeat the server then the animals would have caught us all and taken us to her. I don’t know what would have happened, but I think she had plans for us. Amanda saved us all by levitating her. Without that…”

  “I always thought staying up that late would be fun,” said Charlene. “But it—”

  “Stank.” Although Maybeck used another word.

  “We’ve got work to do,” Finn said. “And we need to act quickly. Who knows what secrets Wayne might have in that old head of his? Secrets no one should know.”

  “Tell us what to do,” Willa said.

  All eyes fell on Finn. They waited for him to say something.

  He smiled, a warmth filling him and making his DHI glow even brighter.

  Wayne would have been proud.

  “We’ll meet after school. We’ve got to find Wayne.”

  He raised his right hand. In it was the black remote with the small button at its center.

  “Ready?” he said.

  The others nodded.

  He pushed the button.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Kingdom Keepers novels depend on a team, in part because the research conducted inside the Parks, and also about the Parks, is both complex and time-consuming, and ultimately essential to the story.

  First, I want to thank my co-writer (from other novels), Dave Barry, who, during a car ride to Orlando’s airport made suggestions to the outline that formed and framed the book, forever changing it. He jokes how I’m the “plot guy” in our partnership, but for once he is “making this up.” He set the clock in the book ticking and gave me one of the most important twists. Thanks.

  The real dedication of the book should probably be to Alex Wright, a Disney Imagineer, a man with tireless patience, who has endured (and I am not making this up!) hundreds of e-mails where I picked his brain for details. Alex also hosted several behind-the-scene tours for me in Animal Kingdom and introduced me to:

  Dr. Joseph Soltis—Wildlife Tracking Center

  Dr. Don Neiffer—Veterinary Hospital

  Debbie Weber—Animal Nutrition Center

  Matt Hohne—Animal Barns

  Jason Surrell—Disney Imagineer (and AK tour host/insider)

  I’d also like to thank my niece, Blair M. Daverman, for filling in some blanks about the sport of lacrosse.

  My wife, Marcelle, along with Laurel and David Walters, as always, copyedited the various drafts. And Tanner Walters, who in sixth grade reads more than I do, gave me an early read and caught a bunch of problems. So did my daughter Paige. And thanks to daughter Storey for reading KK1 and telling me what she liked!

  Special gratitude to Nandy Litzinger, my office manager; Wendy Lefkon, Disney editor; Amy Berkower, agent; Matthew Snyder, film agent; and Jennifer Levine, Disney publicist.

  It obviously takes a village.

  —Ridley Pearson

  January 2008

  St. Louis, Missouri

  RIDLEY PEARSON

  is the award-winning coauthor, along with Dave Barry, of Peter and the Starcatchers, Peter and the Shadow Thieves, Peter and the Secret of Rundoon, and Science Fair. He has also written more than twenty best-selling crime novels, including Killer Weekend, and the young adult novels Kingdom Keepers—Disney After Dark and Steel Trapp—The Challenge. He was the first American to be awarded the Raymond Chandler/Fulbright Fellowship in Detective Fiction at Oxford University.