Duck Boy (27 page)

Lindsay hopped around Uncle Edward on the ceiling frame so she could hold
one of Uncle Edward’s arms. Steve did the same.

“Ready?” Lindsay asked.

“One. Two. Three,” Steve counted.

The two of them heaved Uncle Edward’s arms until his entire body lay on the
ceiling tiles. The tiles bowed with his weight, but they held.

“Uncle Edward,” Lindsay called in a soft voice. “Now we’re going to help you
stand.” She looked towards Steve. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

The two of them slowly hoisted Uncle Edward to his feet, making sure his
feet rested on the metal frames around the ceiling tiles.

“Lindsay, you take Uncle Edward and carefully begin to work your way towards
the front of the building.” He pointed out the right direction. “The police are
on their way but it’s going to take a few more minutes. I’m going to clean up
this room so they can’t tell how you escaped.”

“We’ll see you at the front of the building,” Lindsay said, and Steve
thought he could hear her smile.

Steve hopped into the opening in the ceiling and lowered his feet into the
room. He wiggled his feet around looking for the back of the chair. When he
found it, he slid the toes of his shoes through a space in the back of the
chair to grip it and pulled his body upwards back into the ceiling cavity. He
lifted his feet behind him and slid the trunk of his body sideways, dragging
the chair into the space between the roof and the ceiling tiles.

He replaced the ceiling tile and began walking towards the front of the
building to catch up with Lindsay and Uncle Edward, stepping carefully on the
ceiling tile’s metal framework.

As he began to catch up to the escaping pair, he heard a muffled, angry yell
filter through the ceiling behind him.

Lindsay and Uncle Edward had made good progress. They had already
disappeared into the dim light of the ceiling cavity and were partially
concealed behind some ductwork. He turned towards the room they’d just escaped
from and scanned the scene. Lindsay’s and Uncle Edward’s wet bodies left a
trail of water, tracing a dark path, marking their escape route. Steve scooted
over the ceiling tiles to catch up to them.

“We’re going to have to alter our escape route,” Steve whispered hoarsely to
Lindsay. “They’ll follow our trail of water drips to where we are now. Let’s
stick to the front of the building and make our way to the far corner, over
there.” Steve pointed towards a deep corner in the building. “Once we’re in
that corner, we can make our way to the back of the building and into the
warehouse.”

“Gotcha,” Lindsay replied. Uncle Edward gazed at Steve with puzzled, tired
eyes as he clung to a ceiling support. “We have to keep moving, Uncle Edward,”
Lindsay urged.

Lindsay positioned herself beside Uncle Edward again, and helped him turn
and move slowly towards the dark corner. The activity in the rooms below still
seemed loud enough to cover the noise of their progress. But then someone
started yelling at people, commanding them to be quiet. Voices traveled to
various parts of the building until the noise from below dwindled into silence.

Lindsay heard the silence grow in the building and stopped moving. She
leaned over to Steve and whispered, “I think they know we’re in the ceiling and
they’re listening for where we might be.” Steve nodded his agreement. Lindsay
held her finger to her lips as Uncle Edward looked at her with a questioning
look. The old man nodded uncertainly.

They listened, waiting to hear a sound of what might be happening. There
were sounds of doors opening and closing quietly. The sounds grew closer.

Suddenly the cell phone in Steve’s backpack gave a loud ring. Steve grabbed
his pack and fumbled inside for the phone as it trilled loudly again. Steve
grabbed the phone and answered it as a man shouted from the room below them.

“Let’s move,” Lindsay said in a hoarse whisper. Uncle Edward took a firm
hold of Lindsay’s arm and they began to move. Several gunshots rang out,
peppering the ceiling tile with small dots of light.

“Steve, you sound like you’re in trouble,” came a hollow-sounding voice from
the cell phone. Steve held the phone to his ear as he moved with Lindsay and
Uncle Edward.

“Are you here?” Steve asked in a panicked whisper.

“We’re here,” Larry replied.

“Get in here,” Steve whispered hoarsely into the phone. “Get in here now. I
have Lindsay and Uncle Edward with me. They’re OK. But we’re being shot at
right now.”

“We’re ten minutes away,” Larry said.

“Get here, now!” Steve pleaded quietly. “And you’re going to need back up.
This place is crawling with people.”

“I’m calling for back up, right now,” Larry replied.

A ceiling tile behind them opened up and a burly man climbed into the space.
He lowered a gun towards them. Steve took the cell phone and hurled it at the
man. The man tried to duck and stepped backwards onto the middle of the ceiling
tile, which split in two with his weight, sending him crashing through the
ceiling. He landed heavily on the floor below. No one came up into the ceiling
area after the man had fallen, but Steve could hear sounds of more people
approaching the scene.

Steve turned and caught up with Lindsay.

“I can’t go on,” Uncle Edward muttered weakly. “I can’t go any further.”

“You have to,” Lindsay said.

“I can’t,” Uncle Edward said as his legs buckled under him. Steve caught his
other arm and fought gravity to keep Uncle Edward on his feet.

“Why don’t we drop you two down into the room below,” Steve suggested.
“We’ll find a safe place to hide until the police come.”

He pulled a tile up quickly, scanning the room below. It seemed like some
sort of storage room with all kinds of storerooms boxed in with chain-link
fence. Steve dropped into the room and found a couple of empty crates. He slid
them underneath the opening and stood on each of them to test their strength.
Once he was sure they’d hold Uncle Edward’s weight, he motioned to Lindsay to
help Uncle Edward lower himself into the opening. Uncle Edward’s frail legs
dropped into Steve’s view; he grabbed them in a bear hug. Then slowly, with
Lindsay guiding Uncle Edward’s upper body, Steve lowered his uncle’s legs to
the crates. Uncle Edward stood unsteadily on the crates, while Steve piled junk
in front of him to form a makeshift set of stairs.

He helped Uncle Edward to the floor as Lindsay dropped lightly onto the
crates. None of the chain link storage gates were closed. The three could hear
sounds of people approaching.

Lindsay pointed towards the back of the room. “There’s a window. Maybe we
can make it outside.”

Steve measured the time it would take to get out the window against the
sounds of approaching footsteps. He knew Uncle Edward wouldn’t be able to move
fast enough to get to the window in time.

Steve suddenly had an idea.

The chain-link gates would take a padlock. The handcuffs.

Into his backpack he flew, fishing for the handcuffs. He stuck one of the
cuffs through the padlock holes and cinched it tightly locked.

He threw his hand into the bag to look for his stone. It wasn’t there.

Where’s my Benu stone?

“Lindsay, do you still have your Benu stone?” he demanded urgently.

“Yes. Good thinking,” Lindsay noted quietly.

“I’ve lost mine. I’ve got to go back.”

“Are you insane?”

Steve and Lindsay half-carried, half-dragged Uncle Edward into another chain
link cubicle with an unlocked gate. In this storage compartment, however, there
was a window.

“Lock yourselves in here,” Steve ordered. “Turn Uncle Edward’s watch into a
lock. I’m going to create a distraction, so they don’t come looking for you.”

“Clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock.”
The watch flattened into a single dimension and in a flash of light with a
violent wind, it became a padlock.

Steve climbed one of the chain link walls of a storage area, pushed a
ceiling tile out of the way, and hopped into the ceiling opening. He fit the
ceiling tile back into place and began to make loud noises with his feet as he
crossed the ceiling on the ceiling’s support brackets. As Steve stomped through
the ceiling cavity, a couple of heads popped through the tiles. Steve went for
it, swinging wildly from support to support. The ruse seemed to work. The men
hopped into the ceiling space and began to lumber carefully over the ceiling
frame towards him.

Several more figures poured through the ceiling’s opening, several ceiling
tiles around the building popped upwards, and several squares of light shot
into the darkness above the ceiling.

Steve knew he wouldn’t last very long where he was, and he needed to find
his lost stone. He heard sirens approaching the building, which seemed to throw
the faces and figures in the ceiling space into mass confusion.

In the far end of the building a bright orange light licked through one of
the ceiling panels. It was a flame. The building, despite being soaked with
water, had somehow caught fire.

The fire alarm bells clanged into the confusion all over the building. Steve
heard a dull thud as an orange ball of flame shot through the back half of the
ceiling tile, throwing him backwards. The tile broke, and he plummeted through
the opening to the floor below.

Chapter 21

“I think we’re almost out,” Lindsay murmured happily. Just when they were
close to making their exit, a man waving a gun entered the storage room. He saw
them and gave a triumphant shout.

“I’ve got ’em.” He screamed against the confusion in the building. “They’re
in here.” He took his gun, steadying it with his other hand, and leveled it at
Lindsay. He squeezed the trigger. The loud explosion from the barrel of the gun
screamed in Lindsay’s ears. She thought she had been hit, but she couldn’t feel
any pain.

She quickly checked her body—there was no visible wound. She realized
quickly that his bullet had probably hit the chain-link fencing and deflected
somewhere into the room. The man took aim again and squeezed the trigger.

An click replaced the explosion. The man examined his gun, then pulled the
trigger again. Click. He squeezed the trigger several more times—empty.

In anger, the man thrashed against the locked storage gate with all of his
might, then threw his gun across the room.

There was only one gate between Lindsay and Uncle Edward and a big, angry
man.

Lindsay and Uncle Edward backed through one last gate. She stopped and
removed her own watch, and threaded the soft leather strap through the padlock
clasps. She watched as the angry man threw his weight against the first storage
gate.

She waited until he was completely involved in trying to break the lock and
then she whispered the words. A burst of light and wind cut through the room.
The angry man stopped for a moment, gazing around the room, trying to assess
what had caused the wind and light. On the last gate there hung a stylish,
delicate, feminine-looking lock. When he couldn’t find the source of the
disturbance, he threw his weight against the gate. The lock exploded into a
cloud of parts. He was through the gate!

He growled at the escaping pair and hurled himself against the last gate.
Lindsay helped Uncle Edward back towards the outside wall, near the window.
Lindsay took a piece of pipe she found on the floor and bashed the glass of the
window, showering shards of glass through the storage room. The winter air
belched into the room. She forced the bar along the bottom edge of the window
to knock out the sharp pieces of glass that stubbornly clung to the bottom of the
window frame. She dropped the bar outside of the building when she was
finished.

“The outside is clear,” she yelled to Edward. “Let’s get out there.” She led
a confused Uncle Edward to the window, grabbed him around the waist, and
hoisted him into the opening. His body drooped over the window frame.

The burly beast threw himself at the last gate with another roar. But the
gate held.

Lindsay pushed Uncle Edward’s legs through the window, and leapt out after him.

The man lunged at the gate again, This time the hinges gave way and the gate
swung aside. He threw open the gate and ran towards the window, diving through
the opening after Lindsay and Edward, but his progress stopped abruptly as his
head met a metal bar—a bar that Lindsay held in her hands. The man’s body
dropped back inside the building like a rag doll. Lindsay turned to Uncle
Edward.

“We’ve got to keep moving,” she said.

She squatted behind Uncle Edward’s seated body and hugged it. His legs
dangled uselessly between hers as she stood. Undaunted, she began to move very
slowly towards the sound and light of the sirens.

Suddenly an explosion ripped through the back of the building, and people
began to run from various entrances and exits. Those who were jumping through
the windows frightened Lindsay at first, until she realized they were trying to
escape, not recapture the two of them.