Raids and Rescues

by Bryan Chick

  She forced her eyes to rise. On the bench in front of her sat Sara and Lee-Lee, busy stuffing a backpack with a stack of paper—pages which read, “Free them or we will!” in bold gold font. When Lee-Lee noticed Solana watching her, she handed a few flyers over to her. Solana folded the papers into a square and crammed them into her jacket pocket. Lee-Lee then dished out a few to the other girls.

  “I’m sorry,” Solana suddenly heard herself say. “For what happened, I mean. I wish. . . .” Her voice trailed off as she realized she didn’t know what to say. “I wish someone could have stopped it.”

  The truck made a wide turn and everyone jostled in their seats.

  “We didn’t know,” Solana said. “We didn’t. And then it just happened and it was too late. Your families . . . friends . . . I’m just . . . so sorry.”

  The Specters said nothing. Lee-Lee and Kaleena looked away.

  Solana opened her mouth and then closed it. There was no point in this. Not now. Not with so much else to worry about. Now, she had to focus, to channel her own hurt and aggression and do something meaningful with it. This was something the Descenders did best. The Specters, after all, weren’t the only ones who had suffered.

  The truck drove on and on. Then it finally pulled off the expressway and soon slowed to a stop. With a flick of her wrist, Sara killed the fluorescent lights. Lee-Lee and Kaleena laced their arms through the straps of their backpacks. Footsteps moved alongside the trailer, then the big door squealed open and dim moonlight spilled into the surrounding space. The silhouette of a man appeared.

  “Welcome to the Waterford Zoo,” Mike said. “You’re clear to go.” He turned and quickly walked back to the cab.

  As the Specters rose from their seats, Richie shouted, “Wait!” from his place of invisibility toward the front of the truck.

  “What is it?” Sara asked.

  After a long pause, Richie said, “There’s something . . . something we have to tell you.”

  The Specters stayed quiet. Then they turned and listened.

  CHAPTER 21

  FINAL PREP

  “Are we ready?” Mr. Darby asked.

  Evie looked up and caught her own image reflected twice in the dark lenses of the old man’s sunglasses. “We’re ready.”

  Evie and Elakshi were standing in front of Mr. Darby, who was seated at a table in Lots of Latte, a coffee shop a few buildings down from the gateway into the Secret Creepy Critters. The nearby streets had been reopened since Mr. Darby ordered them closed days ago, and Evie saw people watching, giraffes lifting their heads above signs, and monkeys peering from multistory windows. Everyone knew what was about to take place, but they were careful not to make a spectacle, just in case someone—DeGraff or one of his minions—was watching.

  Mr. Darby reached under a nearby table and brought out two backpacks. One was immediately recognizable—Tameron’s pack, the one with the magical tail—but the other wasn’t. Mr. Darby handed the latter over to Evie, saying, “The Descenders’ gear—everything I could fit.”

  Evie nodded and slipped her arms through the straps. As she did, Elakshi scooped up Tameron’s larger pack.

  Mr. Darby said, “Ten minutes to the Core, five minutes to rescue the Cityzens, ten more to get out.”

  Evie nodded. They’d reviewed and rehearsed the plan dozens of times.

  “And if you don’t return within a half hour,” Mr. Darby continued, “we’ll send in Marlo to check on you. If he brings back bad news, we’ll send backup—as many Descenders as we can afford to pull off guard. Our animals, too. We won’t abandon you in that place.” He looked at a clock on the wall and added, “Operation Rescue is scheduled to begin in five minutes. Any last thoughts or considerations?”

  “What if I get a shot at bringing down DeGraff,” Evie said. “Should I take it?”

  Mr. Darby quickly shook his head. “Just get in and out. This is a rescue mission—nothing else.”

  Evie gave a quick nod and unzipped her left portal pocket, prompting Elakshi to do the same. Chameleons scuttled out from the magical depths onto their torsos and limbs, and the two of them faded into the surroundings.

  “Stay close,” Evie said to Elakshi. “Follow my marks, but leave none.”

  As Evie pushed through the exit, Elakshi was close behind her. After a few seconds, she glanced back at Mr. Darby and happened to see that the door hadn’t closed behind Elaskshi—it was still partly open, as if someone was in its way.

  But of course, no one was, and a second later the door eased shut.

  CHAPTER 22

  SOLANA’S SHOCK

  In the dimly lit truck parked alongside the Waterford Zoo, Solana looked back and forth between Sara and the scouts. A part of her wanted to believe that what she was seeing wasn’t real—that the scouts couldn’t have done something so reckless. Sara stood there, her face full of shock. The other Specters looked frozen in place.

  Sara took a slow, cautious step toward the scouts. She stopped. After a long silence, she came out with the exact question that Solana wanted to ask, her voice quiet so Mike couldn’t hear.

  “What . . . what have you done?”

  CHAPTER 23

  THE PATH TO THE CREEPY CORE

  Evie and Elakshi slipped through the portal into the Secret Creepy Critters, turning their shoulders to disturb the curtains as little as possible. A slant of light came through with them, but anyone seeing it would surely think it was the wind blowing the curtains apart.

  Inside, the world was pitch-black, just as it had been in Marlo’s video. Evie wrinkled her nose at the musty, filthy smell all around. Something crunched beneath her foot—an insect, no doubt, and a rather large one. When she lifted her leg, guts stuck to the sole of her shoe. She heard the click and clatter of other bugs scrambling on the floor, the ceiling, the walls.

  She moved through the darkness a single step at a time, her hands held forward, her fingers probing the air. She began to hear the same low growls they’d heard in the video. On either side of them were sasquatches, and she listened for distinct rumbles and guessed their number. Three? Six? Ten? All she knew for certain was that they were along the walls on both sides.

  A beetle the size of her thumb fell on her head and then crawled onto her face. She sucked back her breath to stifle a scream and swatted the thing aside. Then she tried to overcome her fear by concentrating again on her walk.

  Before long, a dimly lit intersection came into view, and she led Elakshi right into a new corridor that was partly illuminated by torches. Spiders, millipedes, and cockroaches roamed the walls. Moths, locusts, and other insects were flying. They bumped off Evie’s cheeks and chin, and one slipped past her lips, its wings fluttering against her tongue before she could spit it out.

  A single sasquatch came into view. It sat with its back against the wall, its elbows propped on its raised knees. Bugs squirmed along its body and tunneled through its mangy hair. As Evie walked by it, a particularly large insect burst beneath her foot, making the loudest pop yet, and the sasquatch raised its head. She kept perfectly still as the beast sniffed the air and slowly turned its head in one direction, then the other. It curled up one end of its lip, exposing a tusklike fang, and gave a low growl that rumbled beneath the noise of the insects. Just as Evie became certain it was about to attack, a giant millipede emerged from the fur on its forehead and crawled over one of its eyes. The sasquatch snorted and snatched the millipede, which it stuffed into its mouth and chewed to pieces before spitting out the remains. Then it wiped its chin with the back of its hand and looked down, presumably having forgotten about the noise Evie had made.

  Evie started off again and soon made a new turn. This hall seemed a continuation of the previous, with broken aquariums set in bug-covered walls. But there were hardly any bugs in the next corridor, and the walls had more aquariums, about half of which were still intact, fish swimming around bubbling streams of air from the filters. The other aquariums were broken and vacant, their black innards lo
oking like the open mouths of monsters. Evie knew where they were now—the Secret Zoo’s version of Fish Foyer. On one side of the floor lay a sasquatch, sleeping, and Evie held her breath when she caught a whiff of its sewerlike stench.

  The next corridor soon appeared. She moved through it quickly, then through the next and the next, mindful to mark her position to Elakshi: a kick of her foot through the insects; a sweep of her hand through the smoke of a torch.

  When she neared the doorway to the Secret Legless Lane, Elakshi grunted in pain. Evie turned and marked her friend by what she saw along the floor. A snake was whipping around, involuntarily, and it was obvious that it had bitten Elakshi, who was trying to shake it off. Elakshi cried out for Evie, her scream held to a whisper.

  Evie ran back, hoisted her foot, and brought it down, hard. The snake’s mouth sprang open, and in the flickering light of a flame, Evie saw its blood-tinted fangs, which were still dripping poison. It crawled off as fast as it could, a kink in its long, sinuous body. By its striped pattern, Evie knew it was a blue krait, one of the Secret Zoo’s deadliest snakes.

  Evie dropped to one knee and held Elakshi, who’d fallen.

  “What was that?” Elakshi said, and Evie heard something in her voice that she rarely did. Fear.

  “A krait,” Evie said. “Elakshi—you have to go back. You need a doctor.”

  “No!” Elakshi said. “I can—”

  “You can’t,” Evie shot back. “You know that, and there’s no time to argue. Give me the gear.”

  Evie could tell Elakshi’s reluctance by how long it took her to make any noise. But before long, she heard the backpack slide across the ground toward her, and then the scuttle of feet as a few chameleons crawled off it and back onto Elakshi. It took only seconds for the pack to appear, and then the girls stood.

  “How are you going to carry it?” Elakshi asked.

  Evie realized she didn’t have an answer. “Don’t worry about it. Just go.”

  Elakshi didn’t move, not at first. But Evie soon saw her marks in the long corridor as she limped away.

  Silence. Evie was by herself now. She looked down at Tameron’s gear and realized there was no way she could carry it—not with the other backpack already strapped over her shoulders. Maybe she could leave it here and pick it up on the way out. But what if they were forced in a different direction? What if they—

  Her thoughts stopped and her gaze locked on the backpack, which was no longer lying on the floor, but rising into the air, as if by magic, one of its straps pulled tight.

  CHAPTER 24

  INTO THE WATERFORD ZOO

  Megan stood beside Richie, neither one moving. Solana and the Specters continued to stare at them in shock.

  “What’s going on?” Sara said.

  The scouts had come out of their camouflage to reveal that only two of them were in the truck. Richie was with Megan, but not Noah and Ella.

  “They went with Evie,” Megan said. “Into Creepy Critters. To help.”

  “What?” Sara said. “Does she . . . does she know?”

  Megan shook her head.

  Sara took a step forward. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” She looked around the trailer as she searched her thoughts. “They snuck in? With Evie?”

  “Behind Evie,” Richie said. “Technically speaking.”

  Sara kicked one of the benches, almost toppling it. Then she reached toward Solana. “Give me your headset.”

  Solana took a step back.

  “Your headset,” Sara repeated. “I’m calling this in.”

  “It’s too late,” Megan said. “They’re already in Creepy Critters.”

  Sara shifted her eyes and ran her fingers through her wild hair. She kicked the bench a second time.

  “They can help,” Megan said. “Noah . . . he wanted to help.”

  “And he was going to help!” Sara said. “Us!”

  Solana took a step in front of the scouts, saying, “Sara—it’s too late to call this in. We’re here. Let’s concentrate on what needs to be done.”

  Sara opened her mouth, perhaps to protest, and then closed it. After a few seconds, she said to Megan, “You two better keep up.” And then she turned and jumped to the ground. The other Specters followed, one after another.

  Solana glanced at the scouts, nodded, and then stepped to the side of the truck.

  “C’mon, Richie,” Megan said. “Let’s go.”

  They jumped through the open loading door, and then landed on the ground, running. Moonlight glinted on the chain-link fence that wound around the perimeter of the Waterford Zoo. At least fifteen feet high, it had rows of barbed wire across its top, their pointy spikes doing less to keep animals in and more to keep people out. For the Specters, this was barely an obstacle, and as they charged up to it, Kaleena reached into her backpack and pulled out a canvas tarp. She heaved it up and onto the barbed wire, and then the fence rattled and clanked as the Specters scaled it one after another, dropping down into the zoo. Megan followed with ease, and even Richie managed without much trouble.

  As they neared the first overhead light, Sara said, “Ghost it!”

  The Specters reached down and unzipped the left pockets on their cargo pants, and chameleons scrambled out and scattered across their bodies. Megan and Richie followed suit.

  Sara said, “We’ve got a change of plans now that some of us decided not to show. I’ll take Megan to get Blizzard. Lee-Lee, you take Richie to Little Big. Everyone else handle the security cams. And remember—we’ve probably got two guards on foot.”

  They broke in different directions. Sara and Megan cut through gardens, their warm breath wafting into the cold air like puffs of smoke, and ran beside fountains with statues of animals. They charged past zoo exhibits: Chimpville, Zebra Zone, and Platypus Plunge. In no time they reached the hospital, an old two-story building with canvas awnings and a sprawling courtyard. Somewhere inside it, Blizzard was being kept.

  “This is it,” Sara said to the empty space beside her.

  “Let’s go,” the space—Megan—responded.

  Without slowing their stride, the two girls ran up to the main entrance of the building and prepared to break and enter.

  CHAPTER 25

  LEGLESS LANE

  “Elakshi?” Evie asked.

  “It’s me,” Noah said. “And Ella, too.”

  “What? How did—”

  “We followed you,” Ella said, and for Noah, it felt good to hear her voice, and he was glad that he hadn’t had to do this on his own. The morning after making his decision to help Solana, he’d called Ella and asked for her help. She’d been reluctant, at first, but then Noah convinced her that Tank and the Descenders might be in real danger.

  Now Noah watched Tameron’s gear settle into position on Ella’s invisible body as she fed her arms through the wide straps. Chameleons crawled onto the pack and quickly blended the pack into the surroundings.

  “You can’t—”

  “Look,” Ella said. “We snuck in because we thought you might need help. And good thing we did because Elakshi tapped out. Let’s do our job and get out of this nightmare.”

  Silence. After almost a minute, Noah said, “Evie?”

  More silence. Then, at last, Evie said, “Okay, whatever. But Darby finds out this was your idea when we get back!”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Let’s go,” Evie said. “Follow my marks and stay close, just like we practiced in the zoo.”

  Evie took a few steps and turned onto Legless Lane. As Noah followed her, he stopped in his tracks. There were far more snakes than Marlo’s video had shown—so much more that the floor had no open spots. Their dry scales looked slimy in the wavering light of the flames, and as they hissed and rattled, their tongues flicked in and out.

  A handful of tiny objects flew through the air, tumbled down on the bodies of the snakes, and began to stream light all around. Flashmites—Evie must have thrown them. The mites crawled in various directions, part
ing the snakes. Evie squatted and carefully placed another handful of Zak’s invention into one of the clearings, and they began to crawl forward, opening a wide path.

  Evie said, “Hold hands. And stay close.”

  Ella, who was second in line, groped for Noah’s arm, his wrist, his fingers. Her cold hand closed around his and then she pulled him along as she stepped into the opening. The head of a cobra sprang up with its hood flattened and its forked tongue whipping around. It began to sway back and forth, and then struck at one of the tiny flashmites, missing completely.

  The mechanical bugs continued to divide the snakes and provide a route. As soon as Noah stepped out of Legless Lane, the mites began to fade, and Noah realized their power was already dying. The Crossers then headed into what looked like a huge mountain cavity. The Secret Creepy Core. Noah stopped and looked around at the waterfalls, streams, and stalactites. Aquariums were set in the rocky walls, broken panes of glass giving way to empty innards. Giant insects skittered and squirmed across the floor.

  In the middle of the room, glass walls enclosed the Secret Croc Crater. Deep inside of it, Tank and the Descenders were being held prisoner.

  Noah felt a tug on his arm and realized Evie was on the move again.

  CHAPTER 26

  HORNS APLENTY

  The rhino exhibit, Horns Aplenty, was in a two-story stone building wrapped in ivy. Lee-Lee and Richie ran past the main doors and squirmed through a row of overgrown hedges to an entrance at the back. The wide door was kept locked, but Lee-Lee had a key—a magical key from the Secret Zoo that could change its shape to fit the dimensions of any lock. As Lee-Lee stood with her back to the door to keep an eye out, she handed the key over her shoulder to Richie, who put it to work. The heavy door swung open, and the two of them slipped inside. Richie held the key out to Lee-Lee, who snatched it back and casually clipped it to a belt loop in her pants.