Kingdom Keepers V (9781423153429) (11 page)

“Leave or be removed!” Triton bellowed at Ursula.

“What's a matter? Can't a girl have some fun? Besides, it was you who called me, don't forget.”

“The summons was unintentional and ill-advised. You are not needed, as it turns out.”

“Maybe I should determine that?” she said.

“Be gone or I will be rid of you.”

“Oh…I'm just shaking all over!” With that, she threw her hips around, disturbing the pool and disrupting the integrity of the whirlpool. Finn tumbled to the bottom, spun like a top, and then managed to scramble back aboard. He rose to his knees and started surfing again.

“I'm feeling a little…dry,” Ursula said. “How 'bout you, Tri-Tones? Could you use a refresher?” She chortled evilly. “Be my guest!”

“Do not dare!”

“All for now,” she said. “And now for all!” She laughed again.

Finn saw through the wall of the whirlpool the strange squid creatures surrounding Ursula's slowly sinking body, obscuring it. In a burst of bubbles, everything was gone and the water was clear again.

He caught the edge of the board just right and it grabbed and spun like a top, riding up in a spiral and popping to the surface, but the whirlpool collapsed beneath him. It would have drowned him. Killed him. Triton towered above him, but his back was to Finn as he faced the wall of the dam.

“
Go!
I will do what I can!” Triton held the trident out before him as the dam gurgled and the wall bulged. At the same time, the thousands of gallons of water already in the pool moved in an undertow toward the dam. Finn and the board crashed into Triton's back. It made no sense: the water moved from the dam's wave generator to the beach, not vice versa. But Finn was clearly caught in a reverse flood of epic proportions. He slid down a mountain of water toward the suddenly dry beach.

Triton's effort was formidable. He held the staff before him, and miraculously a kind of hole in the water formed around him. It bent and churned, not touching him above the knees. Had Finn been able to hold himself next to the king, he too would have been protected. But having been carried away he was now lying on the damp concrete of what a moment earlier had been pool bottom. He scrambled and stood, but was mesmerized by the height of the wave crest about to crush him. His legs wouldn't move. Finally, the wave peaked.

Triton held his ground; the wave formed around him like he was standing inside a jar. He glanced back at Finn and shook his head. He was noticeably paler. Weaker.

“I must go,” he said.

Finn nodded.

The wave formed majestically—beautifully. A work of nature's art. Blue and mighty and perfect. A mouth opening wider and wider. Finn turned to run.

Amanda stood at what would have been the edge of the beach. She had been following him. She had been protecting him.

“Hurry!” she said. “Grab hold of my waist!”

Finn knew the power she contained in her arms. He'd watched as she levitated both creatures and people. He didn't understand where such things came from—wouldn't have believed them real if he hadn't seen them with his own eyes. He knew there were skeptics. It wasn't his mission to convert them. The Fairlies were real. Amanda and Jess were Fairlies. They couldn't change themselves. Nor should they want to. He grabbed her around the waist and held tightly, knowing what she had in mind.

Triton was gone.

The wave rushed toward them.

Amanda threw out her arms. He felt her body go rigid, felt a kind of pulse flowing from her feet to his arms. He'd never held her like this before. Never this tightly. Never with so much determination and appreciation and confidence in her.

The wave formed, sucking water up into its crest that rolled out like a tuft of white hair. The floor of the pool was now only a few inches deep as every drop of water was summoned into the thirty-foot wave. It grew so high, so quickly, that it once again jumped the walls of the pool, contained now by the towering rock walls of the dam. Two tiny figures stood facing it, one with her arms stretched out.

The wave reached its peak, its mass exceeding its surface tension. It tumbled forward like a building collapsing. It came to kill.

And then it stopped, as if hitting a brick wall. The force of all that water leaning—leaning—out over Amanda and Finn. A lot of water splashed to the pool floor, but the wave itself held.

“Amanda?” Finn whispered into her ear.

He could feel her distance, her removal from her body. She was locked, rock hard, as if in a trance. Her arms trembled as jolts of energy moved through her. Amanda was holding back the wave.

“Don't let go,” she said in a voice he hadn't heard her use before. Darker. Lower. Guttural. “Guide me back toward the gate.”

She was weaker, he realized. The effort was draining her.

“Okay,” he whispered.

Holding tightly around her waist, he took a step back, pulling Amanda with him. Was he dreaming, or did the entire wave move a few feet as they did? He took another step.

The wave advanced with them. For each step Finn took, the wave took the same step. He realized whatever force Amanda possessed, whatever accounted for the halting wave, was at its limit. She could exert no more pressure against it. He wasn't a genius when it came to math, but it occurred to him that no matter how far they backed up, the wave was going to move with them. There was no escaping it.

“Amanda?”

“A little busy here,” she said.

“It's just that it's…moving.”

“Yeah…I know.” They took another step back. The wave lurched forward. But something had changed. Its splashing crest was slightly lower. The more they retreated, the lower it went.

“We're winning,” Finn said, not knowing exactly what he meant. He moved her back more quickly.

“I can't hold it,” she said. In fact, her arms were trembling, her strength waning. The wave had changed positions, now leaning like a shelf directly overhead. If it collapsed…

“I can!”
came the thundering voice of Triton, his face appearing inside the huge wave. “Go! Quickly!”

Finn kicked away some of the tangled pool furniture, making a path for them. But they still had to clear Castaway Creek and get through the gate to reach Finn's mom.

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.