“I’ll give you one last chance to open up or we’re coming in,” shouted Sheriff Abernathy as he continued pounding away.
Lefty pointed his gun at the center of the door and fired four rounds in quick succession. The bullets pierced the door. Several screams and a lot of loud cursing outside followed shortly after.
“They do got guns!” someone yelled.
“Fall back and take cover!” the sheriff shouted. “Those scoundrels just shot Deputy McCoy!”
Eleanor, Cordelia, and Brendan looked at one another in shock.
“Did you kill him?” Brendan asked.
“You’re supposed to be reading,” Lefty snapped.
Brendan forced himself to turn his attention back to the Journal.
Suddenly, a thunderstorm of gunfire erupted outside and bullets tore into the sides of the house like the walls were made of paper. Windows shattered and plaster and wood from the walls blanketed the living room. The occupants dove to the floor. The volley of bullets was continuous, as if there were now hundreds of men outside instead of just a handful.
“Upstairs!” Cordelia shouted. “The bathroom in the hallway on the second floor doesn’t have any walls that face the outside!”
She led the way, as Adie, Eleanor, Brendan, and Lefty followed. They scrambled up the grand stairs in the foyer toward the second-floor hallway. Cordelia was sure somebody was going to get hit on the way up, but somehow they all made it into the bathroom uninjured.
Her instincts had been right; no bullets were penetrating the several walls surrounding the bathroom. Apparently, Denver Kristoff stayed pretty true to classic western tropes, because the men outside seemed to have an endless supply of ammunition and were content just unloading it into the sides of Kristoff House for the better part of fifteen full minutes. The house’s occupants hunkered down and waited, Brendan reading the Journal, and the others trying to come up with some sort of backup plan.
Lefty was the first one to smell the smoke. Before long, they could all smell it. As soon as Cordelia cracked open the bathroom door to investigate they heard the crackling of fire downstairs and saw plumes of thick gray smoke drifting up into the hallway.
Cordelia slammed the door shut again and spun around to face the others with panicked eyes.
“They’ve set the house on fire!”
“There has to be a way out!” Eleanor screamed.
Cordelia shook her head frantically as smoke trickled into the bathroom through the cracks in the doorframe.
“The lower stairs are already on fire,” she said. “The only way we can go is up.”
“Good!” Brendan shouted, leaping to his feet. “We need to get to the attic! I think I just found something that can help us.”
They covered their faces with shirts, scarves, and bath towels before sprinting from the bathroom into the hallway. The smoke was already so thick they could barely make out the person in front of them. But with Brendan leading the way, they made it to the attic safely.
“What now, Bren?” Cordelia asked as she and Lefty pulled the stairs closed.
Brendan ignored her question; he was too busy running his hand along one of the wooden attic walls. He kept glancing down at the open Journal in his left hand while inspecting the wall with his right. Every few inches he would press hard and whisper to himself.
“What’s he doing?” Eleanor asked, worried that her brother had inhaled too much smoke. Or maybe it was a lingering effect of becoming a zombie?
“Hopefully saving us all,” Cordelia said, pushing her younger sister to the far corner of the attic away from the stairs. She could already hear the crackling of flames below them, even above the bullets and gunfire still raining down on the house from all sides, in addition to Lefty firing back at the men outside from the attic window.
Brendan was about ready to call it quits and just assume that what he’d discovered in Kristoff’s Journal were plans that the old man had never gotten around to actually completing, when his hand suddenly passed over an unnatural seam in the wooden planks. He leaned in closer and examined a small fissure. It was nearly invisible, straight, and formed a small rectangle about the size of a notebook. He pressed down at the center and then pushed to the right. The wall didn’t budge for a moment, but then something groaned and creaked and a false panel slid open.
The secret panel hid a small cubbyhole the size of a shoe box. Just large enough to house a steel handle covered in a red rubber grip with the words “Aerial Emergency Dispatch” stenciled across it.
Brendan grabbed the lever and pulled. The old metal creaked as the lever shifted into the up position. Nothing happened for a few seconds and then suddenly the whole house seemed to be vibrating. Several loud bangs and clanks thundered above them from the roof. The house shuddered and rattled as if it were about to disintegrate.
“Bren-n-n-nd-d-a-a-a-a-n!” Cordelia shouted, her words shaking as if someone were slapping her on the back rapidly with two open palms. “Wha-att-t d-d-id-d-d yo-o-ou j-j-just d-d-do-oo?”
He spun around just as something exploded above them. A huge shadow loomed over every window, blocking the sun entirely and plunging the attic into total darkness as the occupants screamed in terror.
Outside, Sheriff Abernathy, his men, and several vigilante townsfolk of Van Hook stopped shooting at the house. Their smoking guns hung limply at their sides while they peered up at the sky.
The huge house was riddled with bullet holes. The bottom floor was on fire and black smoke poured from the broken windows. But nobody noticed either of those things in that moment.
Instead, they gaped at the massive balloon inflating itself above the house’s roof. It was red with silver stripes, reflecting the sunshine so sharply that several of the deputies dropped their weapons to shield their eyes from the glare bouncing off the balloon.
It inflated so quickly that every single man on the ground would later swear it was either some sort of dark magic, or an act of God. And the balloon was so huge that none of the men would be able to accurately portray its size later.
The red-and-silver balloon dwarfed the house itself. It was at least fifteen times the size of the large home. It was attached to the house’s roof, and as it fully inflated and rose up into the sky, it took the odd house right along with it, still ablaze and spewing smoke from every shattered window.
Sheriff Burton “Wolf Catcher” Abernathy clamped his open mouth shut and raised his pearl-gripped pistol again. He pulled back the hammer and resumed shooting at the house as it lifted higher into the sky above them.
“Whatcha y’all gaping at!” he screamed at his men while reloading his gun. “Keep firing! We’re going to pop that balloon!”
“That ain’t no balloon,” said one of the townsfolk who’d ridden out to help apprehend the fugitives. “It’s the hand of God, saving them kids from evil. I’m not taking part in this any longer.”
Several of the other men agreed and followed the first man as he mounted his horse and started back toward town.
But the sheriff’s remaining deputy and a few of the vigilantes followed orders and resumed firing at the house, the bottom floor still trailing smoke as it continued to climb. They fired until their guns were empty. And by the time they had unloaded every last bullet they carried, not only was the massive balloon still intact, but it was now just a spot among the clouds, nearly smaller than even the largest star in a night sky.
“Ah, forget it,” Sheriff Abernathy said, holstering his weapons. “Them kids and the outlaw Payne are as good as dead up there, anyway.”
“You mean those kids,” Deputy Sturgis said.
Sherriff Abernathy shot his deputy a stone-cold glare.
“What? You should be proud,” Sturgis said. “We’re starting to learn us some of that good language stuff!”
“Whatever, let’s go,” the Sheriff growled. “Like I said, they aren’t long for this world. If the fire don’t get ’em first, then the lack of oxygen will.”
“Lack of oxygen?”
Deputy Sturgis asked.
“Yeah, don’t you ever read anything?” Sheriff Abernathy snapped. “Some Englishmen flew a balloon so high they nearly died. One of ’em passed out because there’s no air to breathe up that high. That’s a fact, God’s honest truth.” He took one last look up at the Kristoff House and grinned sickeningly. “They’re all gonna suffocate up there.”
“We’re actually flying!” Brendan screamed from the attic window.
Cordelia pressed her face against an adjacent window and peered down. The cowboys below them were still shooting. The little plumes of smoke coming from the ends of their guns grew smaller and smaller as the old house ascended. The men below looked like tiny action figures holding bouquets of ash-gray roses.
They were actually flying.
Adie had gone into a kind of silent shock when the house first began rising. She remained motionless with her eyes wide and mouth hanging open as the house continued its ascent.
Lefty sat down with his back to the wall, fear softening his normally steely eyes.
“What kind of dark magic is this?” he shouted.
Cordelia didn’t answer him, but instead slid open the attic window. A gust of icy wind stung her face. She fought through it and stuck her head outside and peered up. A massive red-and-silver balloon was attached to the house by a series of cables. At the center of its base near the peak of the house’s roof, a huge burner shot blue flames inside of it. She stared at the balloon for several seconds before realizing she could see her own breath. It was freezing up there.
Cordelia pulled herself back inside and closed the window.
“We’re getting too high!” she yelled, cutting short Brendan and Eleanor’s triumphant celebration. “We’ll freeze to death up here, if we don’t run out of oxygen first! There’s not enough oxygen to survive past thirty thousand feet.”
“How do you know that?” Brendan asked.
“Books,” Cordelia said. “I read books.”
“Well, so do I, Deal!” Brendan said. “And according to the book I’m reading, Kristoff installed this balloon just in case the barrels under the house failed for some reason. Why would he even do that if it meant we’d float up into space to our deaths?”
“Maybe there’s a way to control it,” Cordelia suggested. “Keep reading.”
Brendan started reading again, trying to ignore the black smoke drifting by the window reminding him that the house was also still on fire. But he pushed the thought away. He wasn’t able to read Denver’s nearly indecipherable handwriting without total focus.
Meanwhile, Lefty Payne stayed seated on the floor. His initial shock was gone, but he was still more confused and terrified than he’d ever been in his life, even though he’d never admit it. Being inside the floating house was like being at the peak of a moving mountain, except much higher. It made him very uneasy. There wasn’t much that scared Lefty Payne. Heights was one of them. In fact, there were only three things in the world that scared him:
High Places
Imprisonment (he’d rather be hanged)
Circus Elephants
Adie, on the other hand, would have had to be pried away from the window. After her initial shock, she’d run to the window to see what the world looked like from so high in the air. She loved seeing everything below them looking so tiny. It was a marvel. But deep down, she was thinking about her dad and mom, how they would be worried sick about her. She was supposed to have been home over an hour ago. Plus, if she never went back home, who would finish nursing that poor injured robin back to health?
The temperature inside the attic of Kristoff House dropped quickly, alerting them as to just how little time they had left before they’d run out of air or freeze to death. Already, their breaths were growing more shallow and rapid and visible.
Brendan found it increasingly difficult to focus on the Journal. He’d found the right section; it was just a matter of deciphering the tiny print and faded drawings with an oxygen-deprived brain.
“I think we need to go back downstairs,” he finally said, panting as if he were in the middle of a marathon.
“Are you insane?” Cordelia said. “It’s on fire down there!”
“Not all the way downstairs,” he said. “Just the second floor. The Journal says the controls are in the study.”
Cordelia nodded and the two of them worked to lower the attic stairs. Plumes of smoke billowed into the attic, making it even harder to see and breathe. Adie coughed, and Eleanor pulled her down to the floor.
“Smoke always rises,” Eleanor said, repeating what she’d learned in school. “That’s why you’re supposed to drop to the ground in fires.”
“The fire is still only on the first floor!” Brendan shouted through his shirt, which was pulled up over his face like a bandit.
“We have to hurry!” Cordelia shouted back. “The smoke is so thick we’ll be dead in minutes. You know, in fires, more people die from smoke inhalation than from—”
“We don’t have time for a fire-safety speech!” Brendan cut her off. “Keep moving!”
He ran down the attic stairs, disappearing into the gray haze of smoke. Cordelia sighed and followed after him with Eleanor, Adie, and Lefty close behind. Brendan stayed low but moved fast, bear-crawling his way down the hall toward the study. The door was closed, which bought them more time since not as much smoke had drifted inside of it yet.
Brendan coughed as he ran into the room, waiting by the door for everyone else to get inside. Then he slammed it shut, removed his hooded sweatshirt and stuffed it into the crack underneath the door. The room was cold and hazy, like a movie flashback, but far from the impenetrable gray of the smoky hallway. The Kristoff House study was smaller and less grand than the massive library downstairs, but it still accommodated the five occupants comfortably, and the high ceilings helped distribute the accumulated smoke.
Cordelia headed over to the side window and quickly pushed it open. The cold air that rushed inside knocked the wind from her lungs like a sucker punch to her gut. But it also helped disperse the lingering smoke. She pushed the window closed again after several seconds, her hands growing numb from the cold. It had to be below zero at this height, which wasn’t a good sign.
“Hurry, Brendan!” she shouted.
Brendan and Lefty hunched over the ledge in front of the large bay window across from the huge maple desk in the study. They pulled at one of the ledge’s wooden planks. It groaned under the pressure, as if it were holding on for dear life. Then it cracked, and finally pulled free with a snap.
“Yes!” Brendan said, peering into the small hole left behind.
He reached inside the bay window ledge and pulled up a lever. The sound of ancient gears rotating rumbled below them. The squeal of old metal and rubber belt pulleys greeted them like a warning howl. Then the entire bay window’s landing, roughly the size of a day bed, folded away and spun around on reinforced hinges. The bottom side rotated up, containing a wooden steering wheel with evenly spaced handles extending from the spoke, just like from an old pirate ship. Next to the steering wheel were several large levers, like oversize car stick shifters, and three glass-covered instrument dials.
Brendan referenced something inside the Journal, his teeth chattering and his shallow breaths bursting visibly in front of him like little puffs of smoke. Then he grabbed one of the levers and pulled it down.
The house stopped ascending almost immediately, the sudden shift in direction causing the occupants to stumble slightly. Lefty clutched his stomach uneasily as the house began to descend.
“You did it!” Eleanor yelled, wrapping her arms around her brother’s waist.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Brendan said. “The first floor is still on fire.”
Cordelia jumped up onto the bay window, landing in front of the steering wheel, and pulled aside the curtains covering the three massive windowpanes. She peered outside. They were above a series of light and stringy clouds that looked like pulled cot
ton. Between the gaps she saw that the yellow-and-green plains that had been the landscape when they’d started their ascent were gone. Below them now was a deep-blue surface, sparkling in the sun as if it were coated in glitter.
“We’re over an ocean!” Cordelia yelled. “Lower us more.”
“And the Walker family finally catches a break,” Brendan said, pulling the altitude lever back even farther.
He located the small altimeter and watched as the red needle swung to the right, back below twenty thousand feet. It moved slowly but steadily backward. Eighteen thousand. Seventeen thousand. He breathed out a sigh of relief. After a few more minutes it passed ten thousand. He looked out the window as his ears popped. The ocean was deep blue and dark. The ripples of waves were barely visible, like small cracks on the otherwise smooth surface of the sea.
Adie and Lefty and Eleanor huddled together near the desk. Lefty was too afraid to go anywhere near another window, and Adie was focused on trying to calm down a panicking Eleanor.
“We’re moving too fast!” Brendan said. “At this speed the house will break apart when we hit the water!”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Cordelia said. “This house has already survived two major earthquakes.”
Still, she didn’t really believe her own words. She bit her lower lip and looked out the window again, filled with anxiety.
“I suppose we should all make peace with each other, before we die,” Brendan said. “I’m gonna start now, because I’ve done a whole lot of bad things. . . .”
Cordelia glared at him.
“What?” Brendan said. “I’m just being honest.”
“You really think we’re going to die?” Eleanor asked, her voice shaking.
“Don’t listen to him,” Adie said, putting an arm around the youngest Walker. “Your brother sure has a way of seeing the most gloomy side of every situation. But we’ve made it this far; we aren’t going to die now.”
Brendan felt his face grow hot and then he looked away. He certainly didn’t want to be known as the Debbie Downer of the bunch. Especially not by Adie.
Clash of the Worlds Page 12
