Kingdom Keepers V

by Ridley Pearson

He nudged a clear tire tube aside. Then a double tube. Then some armchairs and a lounge chair. More and more water spilled from the crown of the wave thirty feet overhead. Amanda could no longer contain it.

  The gate was impossibly far away. Then he spotted the solution.

  “I’ve got a plan,” he said.

  “I…”

  She’d lost her strength.

  Triton held back the towering wall of water. It foamed and spit as if it were suddenly boiling. “Goooo,” Triton growled.

  Amanda threw her hands out to help Triton hold it back.

  Finn craned forward and kissed her on the cheek from behind. “You can do this.”

  A bolt of electricity passed through her like a shiver. The wave lifted and stood up behind the power of her force.

  “Turn and grab hold of me, on three,” he said.

  “But—”

  “One…two…” He let go of her, pivoted, and dove for the double tube, grabbing its black rubber handles. He was face down, stretched across the tube. He felt her land on top of him and wrap her arms around his waist. He stood up, the tube held in front of him, Amanda dragging behind, and he started running. Amanda figured it out, moved to hold him around the chest, and also ran.

  The wave seemed to hang in the air. Triton faded and disappeared. Whatever force had been holding it back faded. The wave sank under the weight of its crest, losing its form. It flowed out at the bottom, flooding instead of breaking. Sinking instead of cresting.

  Thousands of gallons of water ran in both directions—one wave rushing back toward the Surf Pool, another surging toward the gate. It quickly caught up to Finn and Amanda, ankle deep, knee deep…

  “Dive!” Finn shouted.

  Together they leaped away from the flood. Finn landed squarely atop the tube, Amanda holding him around the chest. The tube caught the leading edge of the surge like a surfboard, picking up speed and lifting into the curl of the newly formed wave.

  “Left!” Finn shouted, leaning in that direction. He had to steer the tube down the wave and toward the right if they were going to find the gate and avoid being smashed into structures.

  “Right!” he called out.

  Amanda did not argue. He felt her lean slightly to the right. The nose of the tube broke free and fell down the steep incline of water like a sled on ice.

  “Finn!” she cried, squeezing the air out of him. Down, down they raced, in a nosedive heading toward the concrete below.

  He counted down in his head, the gate area appearing far to his right. Just as he was about to shout out a move to the right, the wave reached the lazy river. It was like catching the toe of your shoe on a doorsill. The wave stumbled, rippled, and briefly lost its form. It threw the tube into the air.

  “H…o…l…d on!”

  He held on to the tube’s handles. If Amanda clung to him any stronger she would break his ribs. They did a full flip in slow motion. Then they were upside down in the wave, Amanda’s back in the water, then Finn’s, then the tube over them like a blanket. Finn leaned right. The tube took off, slowly rising back toward the towering curl.

  “What just happened?” she said.

  If Finn had tried that a hundred times, he wouldn’t have been able to duplicate the flip and recovery. They’d gotten lucky, but he wasn’t about to admit it.

  He shouted over his shoulder. “Aim for the gate.” Still clutching the grips, he pointed with his index finger. But the wave was rapidly dispersing, no longer contained by the Surf Pool. They sank lower and slowed. Finn called out a series of turns that steered them clear of obstructions. They settled in a froth of white, bubbling foam, and the tube skidded to a stop only yards from the gate. Knee-deep water flooded out past the ticket booth and then was gone, leaving only wet concrete.

  Behind them, the wave retreated into the river and the Surf Pool and myriad drains carefully hidden and disguised. As Finn and Amanda clambered to their feet and looked back, the waters calmed as suddenly as if none of it had ever happened.

  * * *

  Green Army Men. Six were bunched tightly together, their backs pressed against a shipping container in an area that included the parked trams for the back-lot tours.

  Maybeck could not see them clearly enough to spot a leader, but he knew they were like roaches. If there were six, there were sixty. It meant only one thing: this was no drill. Tonight was the assault on the Base they’d been expecting. This was it. There would be other clusters of Army Men out there, and thanks to Jess, Maybeck knew where to find them.

  He backed out and away from the container and cut across the back lot. There were six indoor/outdoor workshops side by side on the back of the boxlike building that housed the Engineering Base. Maybeck slipped into a screened area marked PAINT SHOP, where Jess and the six volunteers were sitting on props, crates, and sawhorses. Behind them wide strips of murky plastic hung in a row.

  “Okay, here’s the drill,” Maybeck said, taking charge. “Looks like Jess’s map is accurate. I found a bunch of Army Men behind the container here,” he said, angling Jess’s sketch into the faint light cast from spotlights mounted high on the building’s corners.

  “How are we supposed to fight Army Men?” Kenny Carlson asked, his red hair practically neon. “Don’t those guys carry guns?”

  “They do,” Maybeck said. “And they fired their guns at Willa once.”

  “Then?” Kenny said, speaking for the others.

  “The thing about cockroaches,” Maybeck said. “You need for them to come to the bait. If you go after them, they just scatter and regroup somewhere else.”

  “O…kay…” Ken said, sounding dubious.

  Looking around the area, Maybeck moved to the plastic curtain and peered inside. “I take it none of you ever took wood shop or got a wood shop merit badge or whatever.”

  “Ah…”

  “I built a model of an Avatar personnel carrier,” one boy said proudly.

  “My aunt runs an art shop,” Maybeck said, parting the curtain wider and now spotting what he was after. He disappeared inside, returning a minute later with what looked like a huge hypodermic needle in his left hand and a box cutter in his right.

  “You going to give them all shots?” one of the girl volunteers asked. “Knock them out or something?”

  “Epoxy,” Maybeck said. “Fast-drying, permanent epoxy.”

  “I don’t follow you,” Kenny said.

  “But you will,” Maybeck said. “Follow me, that is. You and you and you.” He pointed. “You’re all with me. The rest of you are with Jess.”

  “They are?” Jess said.

  “Here’s how it’s going down,” Maybeck said, holding the glue-tube squeeze tool across his chest like it was a sawed-off shotgun. “Listen up.”

  * * *

  The multipurpose building housing the Engineering Base offices was awkwardly located at the edge of where backstage met onstage—a line easily crossed at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Two massive steel exoskeletons supporting imitation movie sets built for the tram tour were its neighbors on one side while a variety of nondescript, cream-colored support buildings crowded the back side. A narrow access road defined by a barbed-wire-topped chain-link fence meant there was one side Maybeck didn’t have to watch or worry about. The workshops where Maybeck and the others had planted themselves made for an excellent hiding place. They were cluttered with mechanical parts, broken props, tools, and construction equipment.

  Jess’s map suggested four groups of Overtakers. Maybeck and his team took the group he’d just observed; Jess and her group headed for a location on the park side of the Base building. Maybeck could not worry about the other three; he had his own group to deal with.

  Maybeck had always felt like an outcast, partly because of his minority status, partly because he lived with his aunt, not his parents. He felt more like himself with the four original Keepers than with anyone other than his aunt. He found Jess mysterious and therefore hard to read; Amanda was absurdly smart and differ
ent in a way Finn clearly found interesting, but Maybeck couldn’t get comfortable with. He’d discovered he could run an operation as long as he dropped the attitude. The Keepers didn’t tolerate attitude. Now, sneaking along through shadow down the long row of workshops on the back side of the building, the volunteers—the VKKs—fell in behind him like a squad of Marines, and Maybeck took to his leadership role effortlessly. He raised his hand to slow the three, waved it forward to move them. Eyes and ears alert, he darted across the pavement to the first of the containers, his team following closely. As they reached the third container, he indicated an area at his feet by drawing a box. The first of the VKKs nodded, accepting the glue tube from him. The two others backed up ten feet, as Maybeck had instructed earlier. He gave them all a thumbs-up. They returned the gesture, signaling their readiness.

  Maybeck slipped around the corner of the container—the same container that the Army Men had their backs to at the other end. He counted down from sixty, recalling the application instructions. When he reached thirty, he moved toward the Army Men, making himself obvious while trying to appear otherwise.

  The nearest green man caught sight of him and slapped the arms of the others. The Army Men could not speak; they took orders, they did not give them. Their current orders were, no doubt, to take the Base, to capture any kid or any hologram they spotted. The squad took off in lockstep toward Maybeck.

  Maybeck was a Toy Story fan. He knew the Green Army Men well, knew that a peculiar feature of the characters in the films were the plastic bases attached to their boots that allowed them to stand. Cast Members dressed as Army Men at Pixar Place in the Studios lacked the plastic bases but wore oversized boots in their place—a costume feature he was counting on.

  He knew the chase would be no contest. For one thing, Maybeck was fast—very fast. For another, an army squad that double-timed in formation was no match for an individual in a footrace.

  Having made sure he’d been spotted and was being pursued, Maybeck ran back from where he’d come. He turned the corner, took five strides, and jumped, tucking his knees. He landed hard, lost his balance, and rolled. At that exact moment, the Army Men appeared and charged.

  Maybeck came to his feet facing the squad, his own team of volunteers perfectly in place behind him.

  He counted the strides of the squad. One…two…three…four…

  “Now!” he said to the VKKs.

  As a group they raised their hands above their heads.

  “We surrender!” Maybeck called. The pronouncement caused the squad leader to raise his hand, and he stopped the squad cold. He indicated for them to lower their weapons, as Maybeck and the others were defenseless.

  Maybeck counted in his head as he said anything that came to mind. “We request to be treated as captive prisoners of war.” Nine, ten. “You will therefore allow us to notify our superiors of our situation in…”—thirteen, fourteen—“an attempt to…”—seventeen, eighteen—“negotiate an exchange of prisoners.” Twenty!

  “On second thought,” Maybeck said, “maybe we’ll be going now.”

  He turned around, as did the VKKs, following his cue. The four holograms took off. Maybeck knew that DHI 2.0 allowed him to easily maintain his hologram state—that bullets couldn’t hurt him. But he wasn’t nearly as confident the VKKs could master their fear in order to maintain the quality of the projection. He was counting on a series of events to protect them all, and, glancing over his shoulder, he saw them occur as if he’d scripted them.

  First, the squad leader pointed at the four kids, raising his own rifle. His five squad members followed, also lifting their guns. Next, the squad leader took a step forward—or attempted to. But his boots were glued to the asphalt, courtesy of the glue tube and the efforts of the VKKs to saturate the area Maybeck had jumped over.

  As the squad leader tried to step, he lost his balance and fell forward. He planted face-first into the glued surface, sticking to it like a fly to flypaper. His squad did exactly as their leader did: raised their weapons, tried to move, and fell to the blacktop, sticking to it instantly. Their weapons adhered as well. Maybeck and the others fled back to the paint workshop to join Jess when she and her team returned from an identical mission. With any luck that would be soon, and, according to Jess’s map, half the enemy would be flat on their faces, easy prisoners for park security to collect.

  The ranks of the Overtakers battling for the Base had just gotten smaller.

  * * *

  Finn and Amanda stumbled across the parking lot, wet, weary, and wary. The summons by Ursula might have been the end of it, and it might have just been the beginning.

  Finn’s mother’s car was the only vehicle in a lot that could hold a thousand. Finn and Amanda reached a pair of palm trees and paused. Why couldn’t his mother have parked a little closer or moved the car once the party had gotten out?

  “Clear?” he said.

  But Amanda didn’t answer. Holding back Ursula’s wave had sapped all her strength, drained her to where the tube surfing and running had left her in a stupor of diminished capacities. He took one look at her and knew it was up to him to get her back safely. She was in a zone, and it wasn’t a good one.

  “I’ve got you,” he said, taking her gently by the upper arm. “Hang in there.” She’d saved his life. The least he could do was get her to Mrs. Nash’s foster home safely. She tugged away from the contact—was it wrong to grab a girl by the upper arm?—but he squeezed more tightly, not letting her go. Briefly, she leaned her head against his shoulder, just to where it touched. Then she straightened back up and allowed herself to be guided across the vast expanse of open blacktop as Finn raced for the car.

  He spotted his mom through the windshield. He rolled his free hand vigorously, signaling for her to start the car and get going. And yet she just sat there. The car remained silent. He opened the back door for Amanda and closed it behind her. He climbed into the front seat.

  “Go! Go!” he said. “Mom! Come on!”

  Mrs. Whitman reached for the ignition key and started the car.

  “How did it go?” she asked.

  Finn motioned out at the half-flooded parking lot. “It could have gone better,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  She started the car and the headlights came on automatically. Finn’s mom moved the gearshift and they took off. She drove confidently, though hardly in a hurry.

  “Pedal to the metal, Mom. Come on!”

  “You’re not in any danger from her now,” she said.

  Finn missed it at first, but not Amanda. That was who Amanda was. That was partly what made her so special. Her secretive, intuitive nature, a quality of always being a step ahead and yet right behind you.

  “From who?” Amanda said.

  Or maybe it was the result of her sitting in the backseat, of her having a good view of the car’s rearview mirror. Of spotting something about his mother’s face that Finn had not spotted.

  “From Ur—” Finn said, turning to look back at Amanda, wondering how she could be so tired as to have forgotten the last twenty minutes. But Amanda wore a worried, severe expression. Finn caught himself mid-syllable.

  Her…His mother had said “her.”

  Mrs. Whitman glanced over at her son, adopting a forced smile that Finn interpreted as meaning one of two things: either she was furious and trying to contain herself because Amanda was in the car, or she was trying to slip something past him. These were the only two alternatives. Between mother and son sometimes words weren’t necessary at all.

  They reached the end of the access road into Typhoon Lagoon, where it met Lake Buena Vista Drive. Cars were streaming out of Downtown Disney, the Cirque du Soleil show having just concluded. Headlights shone into Finn’s car so brightly that he looked away from them, averting his eyes and looking directly at his mom. She too recoiled from the glare, holding her hand up to screen her face.

  Amanda reached forward and took Finn’s arm the same way he had taken h
ers minutes earlier. She squeezed hard. For she’d seen what Finn had seen.

  This woman’s eyes were green.

  His mother had blue eyes.

  There are times a laptop computer or smart phone will pause for no reason—just hang as if taking a little longer than usual to think through a mundane instruction. Finn’s brain did just that. It did not jump to conclusions. It did not instruct him to open the car door. It did not suggest an exchange of expressions with Amanda. It froze, stunned.

  It must be a trick of the light, his brain said. It must be those new halogen headlights, or the vapor lights in the parking lot, or possibly something to do with the angle of—he had to reach back to science class—infraction? refraction? of light distorting under the effects of a lens. It wasn’t that his mother’s eyes were suddenly green; it was a trick, a special effect.

  But then his logic was challenged by his physical senses. However it might be explained, his mother’s eyes were currently green. It didn’t matter how many cars passed—that wasn’t going to change.

  The traffic light turned green.

  “Now!” Finn said, yanking on the door handle while releasing his seat belt.

  To his great relief Amanda was, as usual, a step ahead of him and already out of the car.

  Neither bothered to shut the doors. Instead, they took off at a full sprint down the sidewalk, Amanda suddenly possessed with strength again, though her adrenaline faded fast, and Finn took her and pulled her along with him.

  “How did that happen?” Amanda choked out.

  Finn couldn’t answer. He didn’t want to reveal the tears choking in his throat. His ally at home. The one person he felt he could trust above all others, even Wayne. His own personal rocket scientist who happened to cook him meals and tuck him in at night. Sure, she could be a pain in the butt—she was his mother.

  He couldn’t go home. His own mother was an OTK, but not a kid, an adult, so more like an OTA. Maleficent had stolen his mother from him.

  “It’s not possible,” he said.

  “Maybe we got it wrong,” Amanda said, trying to cheer him up as they darted across the wide boulevard and onto the grounds of Downtown Disney. They could catch a bus to the Transportation and Ticket Center. They could make a plan. They could figure something out.