by Shae Hutto
Without waiting for Claire to make the obvious decision, Nick opened the door. Weenie dashed through it, obviously frightened badly by whatever had screeched so violently. That was a bad sign, thought Claire, seeing as how Weenie had attacked a werewolf once. The horrible cry sounded again, and Claire and Roger hurriedly followed Nick and Weenie back through the door, eager to not share a world with whatever that was, up there above the clouds.
Claire closed the door behind them and they all relaxed with visible relief. The familiar Spartan austerity of the hallway was beginning to feel like home to Claire and the friends she was coming to think of as her team. In the absence of the menacing sound from the sky, the feelings it inspired seemed to drain away from their minds. They quickly shook off the oppressive fear that had panicked them into such a hasty retreat. That was probably the whole point of the sound: to panic prey into fleeing so it could be seen and caught, thought Claire. Now that it was gone, she was having a difficult time recalling what exactly it had felt like.
“That’s our time for today, guys,” said Claire regretfully. “Nick and I need to get a move on. We’ll see you guys same time tomorrow.” Every time they entered and exited a world, fifty-nine minutes would elapse in their key reality. This necessarily limited them to one world a day when they had less than two hours to spend in the library, which was every school day.
Roger sighed theatrically as they started back for the door to the lighthouse. As they rounded a corner, the group came face to face with a startled robot cleaner and its attendant rodents. Everyone froze for a second or two. As Claire reached for a wand and Roger’s hand touched the hilt of his sabre, the robostrocity screamed in electronic alarm and fled hastily down the corridor and around the corner, bumping into walls and wailing in distress. The rats sprinted after their master. Based on past experiences, the cleaning bot and its attendants had no desire to spend any time in close proximity to Claire or Roger. Such a small, easy victory did more to lift their spirits than one would think. They were able to finish the day on a high note and they parted ways with smiles and words of encouragement. Tomorrow was a new day, and they were all hopeful.
CHAPTER THREE: The Unexpected
“Nothing, for the most part, surprises me anymore.”
- Brett Favre
“Hubris. H - U – B – R – I – S, Hubris,” said Claire into the microphone. There was a second or so of delay before the judge responded. No matter how easy the word, during that second, Claire always felt like she must have gotten it wrong and everyone else already knew it and was disappointed that she was so stupid.
“Correct,” said the judge, a dapper looking Asian man in his early thirties with an incongruously large midsection. Claire managed to refrain from laughing at the judge’s beerbelly and stepped back from the microphone to allow the next contestant his turn in the hot spot. A boy named Leonard, whom everyone called Lenny, was next. His word was almost as easy as ‘hubris’. He got ‘perfidy’ and he got it right. Claire’s friend, Amanda was up next and for her first word, got ‘corral’. Unfortunately, ‘Manda left off the second r and spelled ‘coral,’ which is still a word, but not the right one. Claire felt for her. It was humiliating to be eliminated in the first round. After a sympathetic look when ‘Manda glanced at her, Claire put back on her Face of Concentration, as she liked to think of it. Amanda stormed off the stage, visibly in a huff.
Bored, Claire allowed herself to zone out for a bit and let her mind wander to the problem of how to proceed in her self-appointed quest to rescue the Queen’s family. In light of the fact that the maze world was now inhabited by an airborne threat of unknown magnitude, firepower was going to be an issue. Either that, or speed. Perhaps both. Speed was going to be a problem if they had to wait for hours for the sun to set. Maybe disguises again? Or just plain old camouflage. She grinned as she remembered Roger disguised as a ballerina. They could always just sit in the hallway with the door open, waiting for the sun to go down. They would be safe from attack from the skies. But time would pass in the real world. That wouldn’t work.
“Claire, your word is ‘scurrilous,’” said the judge. It took a second for it to register that she was up and had a word to spell. “Claire? Do you need me to repeat your word? We need an answer, please.” Claire felt her face heat up.
“Scurrilous,” she said into the mic, her voice echoing off the walls of the auditorium ominously, mockingly. “S – C – U – R – ,“ She hesitated, not because she was unsure of what the next letter was but because she had heard something that was familiar. And terrifying. It sounded again and this time everyone heard. The auditorium noise level went from 0 to a quiet hum as people started looking at the ceiling and out the windows in an effort to figure out what that horrible scream was. It sounded like a mix of a hawk, a mountain lion and the T-Rex from Jurassic Park. It was the same sound Claire and her crew had run from in the maze world. From just outside, in the parking lot, there was a world ripping sound of explosions and the windows blew in. The room erupted in panic and was filled with the sound of women and children screaming. Everyone made a mad dash for the exit on the opposite wall from the parking lot, resulting in the predictable crush of humanity that effectively stoppered the door completely. Claire stood on the stage, in a state of total disbelief, microphone forgotten in front of her.
Through a window, Claire saw a whirling mass of flame and smoke that used to be the parking lot of Alex Clancy High. From out of the swirling, burning blob of death, a figure emerged. Its scales gleaming in the dancing firelight, its one eye malevolently fixed on Claire through the window, was a massive red and yellow dragon. Claire recognized it immediately from a tapestry in the Queen’s castle. Its missing eye confirmed its identity. Outside her school, breathing fire and screaming in rage was Connix. A real, live dragon. Connix’s great leathery wings flapped laconically, creating small fire tornadoes and sending clouds of billowing sparks rushing through the window.
“Oh, bloody hell,” murmured Claire, borrowing one of Roger’s favorite oaths which was picked up by the microphone and blasted back into the auditorium by the speakers. She knocked over the mic as she leapt over the small riser where the rest of the spelling bee contestants were standing. Violently loud feedback erupted from the speakers, competing with the din of the raging dragon trying to tear its way into the auditorium. Connix actually checked his rampage at the horrible screeching noise issuing from the speakers and peered curiously into the window, looking for whatever beast could make such a racket. He saw no beast, and neither did he see Claire. After vaulting the riser, Claire had rushed through the backstage exit and was now racing down a hallway lined with lockers, headed for the bus pickup line on the other side of the school.
She stopped at her locker and started entering the combination. When she screwed it up the first time, Claire hissed in frustration, and spurred on by the sounds of her school being destroyed with fire, pulled a small wooden wand out of her jeans pocket and blasted the locker door off its hinges. Several kids and a couple of adults who were running down the hallway, screaming, stopped when they saw the locker explode and ran the other way, still screaming. Claire reached in and grabbed her bookbag, then resumed her sprint down the hall. As she rounded the last corner before the office and front doors, she barreled into Amanda, nearly knocking her down. As she stood there, she spotted some of the janitor’s gear on a work ladder. On a whim, she raked some tools and sundry equipment into her backpack. Claire was normally against theft, but the appearance of a hostile dragon seemed to indicate an impending adventure. Her experience with adventure told her it was best to be prepared and that petty larceny could probably be overlooked when the school was being ripped apart by magical monsters.
“What’s going on?” asked Amanda plaintively as she dully watched Claire steal a cordless drill. “Is it terrorists?” From the roof, came the crashing sound of something huge landing on it. Several ceiling tiles fell around them.
“I have to get to
the library,” huffed Claire, scanning the world outside the glass doors for either dragons she should avoid or running vehicles she could steal.
“The library? What are you talking about?” asked Amanda, understandably confused. “The library is back that way,” she said, pointing back down the hallway into the school. Then she looked from Claire to the ceiling, which was being torn off, and back to Claire who was now sprinting out the glass doors. Amanda followed her. The only running vehicle outside was school bus #36, one of several in line, ready to start the laborious process of returning children to their homes at the end of the day. Conveniently, the doors were open, and Claire vaulted into the running bus and swung the lever to close the doors, catching Amanda halfway in, one leg and arm pinched painfully and hanging outside the bus.
“OUCH!” squawked Amanda. “Open the doors!”
Claire had neither time nor inclination to open the doors. She put the bus in gear and shoved the gas pedal to the floor. She wasn’t a complete novice. She had a learner’s permit and had been driving with her dad in anticipation of getting her full license in October. She was no expert, though and her dad’s truck was no school bus. Expecting the behemoth of a yellow dog to be excruciatingly slow, she was momentarily shocked by how quickly the empty bus lurched forward, roaring and sending out a small cloud of black smoke from its tail pipe. She turned the wheel to the left to go around another parked bus. Her front fender clipped yet another bus, shoved a Prius into the ditch and knocked over a bike rack before she could get the wheel turned back to the right. She over-corrected and they jumped the curb. Amanda screamed in terror. Taking pity on her, Claire opened the lever enough to free Amanda who collapsed on the stair. Her compassion was nearly fatal. Distracted by the door, Claire almost drove into the band hall. Several band members, fleeing the dragon, were almost run down by Claire. She did manage to flatten a French horn. Win.
She narrowly missed the band hall, itself, and turned toward the highway in front of the school, scattering already panicked people in every direction as they tried to avoid being eaten by a dragon and flattened by a school bus at the same time. As the bus approached the school exit and the highway beyond, she accelerated, ignoring traffic. She had to swerve as she caught sight in her side mirror of a blazing fireball headed for the bus. The ball of fire hit the pavement where they would have been had they not swerved, gouging a flaming crater out of the asphalt.
“God save Ireland,” she said under her breath, borrowing another one of Roger’s favored epithets. She tried to not think about Roger, instead concentrating on not getting them killed. She swerved again as the dragon tried to grab the bus with its talons. It missed as they lurched into highway traffic. The bus t-boned a Honda Civic and the dragon hit a Ford F250. The bus kept going. The Civic spun into the median, crumpled beyond recognition. The dragon and the Ford cartwheeled into the turn lane, sending glass, plastic, metal, scales and fire in every direction. Claire turned left, sideswiping a minivan.
“Is that a dinosaur?” asked Amanda, pointing at the angry dragon that was sending Ford parts and pieces in every direction as it freed itself from the smoking wreck. Sometimes Ford tough just isn’t tough enough.
“No. That’s a dragon, ‘Manda,” she said calmly. “D – R – A – G – O – N, dragon.” She laughed merrily at her own humor. This struck her as inappropriate and it occurred to her that she was hysterical. Or maybe she was just enjoying herself too much. Was she crazy? “Hang on to something,” she said and swerved around a concrete truck, trying to put something solid between them and the oncoming dragon. There were no seatbelts. Amanda looked around desperately for something to hold onto. Claire tried and failed to open the window next to her while driving. Growling in exasperation, she knocked out the window with her math book which fell onto the road amidst a shower of broken glass and unsolved algebra problems. Next to them, the concrete truck was engulfed in flames and flipped over, somersaulting down the highway and spraying glutinous cement goo all over the road. They outran it and Claire pointed her wand out the missing window and blasted a stream of ice at Connix. Now it was the dragon’s turn to swerve evasively, and Claire snickered with dark humor when he dodged too slowly, and one wing was encased in a layer of ice. The flying dragon took a ballistic path to the earth, ploughing a huge smoking scar into the shoulder and covering his left side in dirt and wet cement. His screams of rage and pain nearly deafened them before they left him behind.
Anticipating the swift return of the angry fire-breathing dragon, Claire pushed the bus to seventy, ignoring the 55 mph speed limit as they got into town and headed for the library. Claire had to slow down to make a couple of turns as they got close to downtown where the library was. On the second turn, as they went around the corner, she briefly caught a glimpse of Connix who was quickly gaining as he charged up the road, half running, half flying and shedding ice and half congealed concrete. He was still a way back and they couldn’t hear him bellowing yet, so maybe there was enough time. Amanda kept trying to ask questions in her plaintive, fearful voice but Claire just waved her into silence and concentrated on navigating the streets in a bus at twenty over the speed limit.
She was getting the hang of it and felt she was doing pretty well until she got behind an ancient Cadillac that refused to speed up or get out of the way. With a grim sort of satisfaction, she rear-ended the car and proceeded to force it to speed up by pushing it down the road. When Amanda screamed, Claire at first thought it was because of what she was doing with the bus, but a glance back made it clear that she was screaming because a huge scaly beast with one eye was rapidly catching up with them. She slammed on the brakes and a fireball meant for them engulfed the Caddy they had been pushing. Claire opened the doors with the lever and slowed down to 10 mph as they pulled even with the library. People on the sidewalks and the lawn were staring at the bus as she deliberately drove up over the curb and onto the sidewalk. She grabbed Amanda by the shirt sleeve and slung her backpack over her shoulder.
“We have to jump. Now!” Without waiting for Amanda to respond, Claire leapt from the bus, meaning to roll as she hit the ground like some sort of stuntman but skidding into the bushes instead. The bus continued to barrel down the sidewalk at a running pace and Connix finally caught up with it. As the dragon began to savagely and triumphantly rip the yellow dog to shreds, Claire clawed her way out of the bushes and ran for the front entrance to the library, trailing her bulging, banging book bag, and leaving a trail of hedge leaves in her wake. She could hear the dragon screaming in rage as it found the bus to be empty. The horrible screeching drowned out the screams of onlookers, the squeals of tires and brakes, and the rapidly approaching wails of emergency vehicles and police cars. One man in a sports car stopped in the turn lane, calmly put on his emergency flashers and leapt from his stationary car like an action hero. As she pulled open the front door to the library, Claire noticed that Amanda was right beside her. In fact, Amanda tried to shove her out of the way to go through the doors first until she realized who she was shoving.
“Sorry,” she said. “You first, Claire.”
“Thanks,” mumbled Claire as she entered the building and sprinted for the elevator.
“Where are we going?” asked Amanda as Claire pressed the elevator call button and waited impatiently for the doors to open, one eye on the front doors searching for rampaging mythical flying serpents.
“We aren’t going anywhere. I’m getting on this elevator and you are going to go hide in the bathroom,” said Claire, pressing the call button again, even though she knew it would do absolutely no good.
Amanda looked hurt. Claire found her pout to be vaguely comical.
“Where are you going that’s so special that I can’t come? It’s a library, not Fort Knox. And why are you acting like you know something? What could you possibly know about dragons?” With a civilized ‘DING,’ the doors slid open to reveal a blessedly empty elevator car.
“No time to explain, ‘Manda,” s
he said as she entered the elevator, then stopped abruptly as Connix shoved his huge scaly head through the front door of the library and belched a searing hot tongue of flame in their direction. “Never mind,” she said hastily and grabbed Amanda by the wrist and pulled her into the elevator, simultaneously pushing the door close button.
As the flames roasting the lobby disappeared behind stainless steel doors, Claire dug her keys out of her pocket, found the one with the infinity symbol on it and opened the service door.
“Should you be messing with that?” asked Amanda
Claire rolled her eyes and pushed the button. “Please, ‘Manda, there is, like, zero time for questions. You’re going to have to save them for a few minutes, ok?” The elevator passed beyond the limits of the building and the background noise of Godzilla’s cousin devastating the library abruptly ceased. Claire noted the sudden quiet and relaxed a little bit, but she was still uncertain whether the dragon could get to them in the hallway. Obviously, he couldn’t fit himself in, but what would happen if he completely destroyed the library and its elevator? Claire didn’t want to find out the hard way. When the doors opened, she grabbed Amanda by the wrist again and made for the lighthouse door. There was barely even enough time for Amanda to squawk indignantly at being dragged like a child before she had the door open and shoved Amanda into the lighthouse world. She followed quickly and closed the door. Amanda looked around in disbelief, her already wide eyes expanding to gargantuan proportions as she took in the surf breaking on the rocks outside the window. She turned an alarming shade of white tinged with green.
“I think I need to sit down,” she said quietly and promptly sat on the stone floor.
“You do that, ‘Manda,” replied Claire as she opened the lighthouse exit. “Just sit there and rest. Please don’t go exploring and get lost. I have to go find someone and I’ll be back in a minute. Just stay there, ok?”
