Kingdom Keepers VII (21 page)

“Darn right,” Maybeck says.

Stress darkens Jess’s voice. “We might see something the two of you could miss.”

“We’re not going to see much,” Finn says as the first door swings open, admitting the car into the blackness ahead.

“The treasure of Mara,” Jess hisses.

The way is lit only by harsh emergency lights. Sharp shadows cast the normally gleaming displays into gloom through which the shimmer of gold can be seen.

“Riches!” Amanda calls out. “The first of Mara’s three promises.”

Jess takes Amanda’s projected hand—they both feel the contact, which is a bad omen. They aren’t fully crossed over.

Above them, the heads and necks of six golden dragons coil together in a writhing mass. Ahead, the face of Mara stares blankly down through hollow eyes.

Amanda grips Jess’s hand tightly, expecting the dragons to peel away from the wall and strike them.

Nothing happens—at first. Then, as they close in on Mara’s huge golden mask, smoke and light pour from her eyes. The car swings left and into a tunnel of—

“Light…ning,” Jess mutters. She looks to be asleep already—or in a trance. Amanda rubs her hands hard against her jeans to dry her palms.

The hallway is nearly pitch-black.

“It starts and ends in lightning,” Jess says, her eyeballs dancing behind her closed lids.

On cue, the walls are suddenly alight with feverish blue-and-white bolts of electricity. The flashes partially illuminate more dragons—these are made of stone—and a frozen Animatronic Indiana Jones, which the Keepers are fast approaching.

“Eternal youth,” Amanda says. “Lightning is the universe’s energy. The Big Bang. The final clap of thunder waiting at the end of it all. It starts and stops everything.”

“It starts and ends in lightning,” Jess repeats, her sleepy voice sounding more confident.

The ride gives the Keepers no time to think. They are tossed and jostled as they struggle to secure their seat belts.

Turning abruptly left, they bounce through the dark. A horrid face, fifteen feet high, rises up before them, all cheeks and teeth. A beam of energy fires from its left eye and explodes into a fireball so close to Maybeck’s arm that he feels the heat.

“Not liking this,” Maybeck cries. “Just saying. Fireballs. You know who.”

“She’s dead,” Finn says. “I killed her.”

“Yeah. Right.” Maybeck doesn’t sound convinced.

Left again. Always left. The car picks up speed, flying recklessly toward a horrible demonic face from which all the Keepers instinctively avert their eyes.

Amanda cries, “Help me!”

Maybeck reaches toward her, fighting along with Amanda to keep Jess in her seat. Jess seems to be under a spell, or somehow sleeping through the car’s ragged movement; she’s flopping around like a puppet, her neck bending so far back and in such an ungainly, otherworldly way that Maybeck in terror pulls her into his shoulder and secures her in a kind of improvised headlock. He softly strokes her hair.

“Not…supposed…to…be…this…rough,” Finn manages to croak.

The car has taken on a life of its own.

“They don’t want us getting visions of the future.” Maybeck’s voice sounds half strangled, like he’s about to throw up.

“Hold on!” Finn cries.

The car swings left yet again. Finn presses against Amanda, and Amanda to Jess and Jess against Maybeck’s shoulder. Maybeck’s ribs are crushed, stealing his breath.

Maybeck gags on his words. “You hear that scratching?”

“Scarabs,” Jess whispers.

“Beetles,” Amanda says as the three—all but Jess—slap at their arms. Thousands, tens of thousands, of the things are crawling across their skin.

The girls
and
the boys let out screams of horror.

It’s Finn who first thinks to brush them off Amanda instead of himself. He’s more efficient at it this way. Amanda, spitting and groaning, catches on and attacks the bugs crawl-ing all over him, sweeping the beetles off his arms, pushing them out of his hair and face, digging through them at his mouth and nostrils to keep him from smothering. He gasps for air.

“Disgusting!”

Maybeck hollers,
“Get them off—”
But his words are choked to silence.

As Finn clears Amanda’s mouth, she calls out roughly to Maybeck to keep Jess breathing. Only then does it occur to her and Finn that if Maybeck’s helping Jess, there’s no one to help him.

Finn lunges across the front row, lying atop Amanda and over Jess, and digs at Maybeck’s face, scooping the seething mass of beetles away by the handful. Maybeck coughs and gasps for air.

As quickly as they came, the beetles are gone, running over the sides and off the back of the vehicle like a black blanket being pulled off a table.

It’s at that moment that the vehicle stops, halting so abruptly that Finn nearly flies out.

“Snakes!” he says.

“That’s no ordinary snake. That’s more like a giant sea serpent!”

They’re facing a cobra three feet thick and thirty feet long. Forty, if it were laid out straight.

“That ain’t no Animatronic,” says Maybeck. “And it has bloody scars on its back. Jafar?”

“Who else, with those scratches?” Finn says, his voice sounding fragile and dry.

“We had help last time.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Check out Jess,” Maybeck says.

The girl, eyes closed, skin pale, trembles in the front seat as Amanda attempts to console her.

“She’s way under,” Amanda mutters. “We’re not waking her when she’s like this. She’ll surface when it’s time.”

“When is that, exactly?” Maybeck asks, his voice tense with anxiety. He never takes his eyes off the impossibly large cobra, its head the size of a refrigerator. The snake’s tongue unrolls and flickers past Maybeck’s bleeding leg.

“It smells your blood,” Finn says.

“Oh, gre—”

The cobra snatches Maybeck into its mouth so quickly that Finn never sees it move. The snake is right back where it was, towering over them, but now Maybeck is clamped in its jaws, prone, his feet sticking out one side of the huge mouth, his head the other. The snake works to rotate Maybeck to make him easier to swallow, but Maybeck holds tightly to its lower jaw, refusing to budge. Covered in slime and goo, he kicks at the opposite side of the cobra’s jaw, dislocating it; but not to his advantage. The reptile can easily dislocate his jaw to swallow large prey; Maybeck has only accelerated the process.

“Finn!” Maybeck cries.

“
All clear!
”
Finn shouts.

“Oh, sure! Get real.
Help me!
”

Finn dives across the snake’s body and slams a clenched fist into an open wound oozing green pus. Jafar—the cobra—startles and wrenches his swollen mouth toward Finn.

Finn strikes the wound again. And
again.

The cobra rocks forward to bite Finn, nearly losing Maybeck in the process. But then the snake’s tail lurches up out of the dark, aiming for Finn, but missing, and swats its own back, striking the open wound. The cobra reels in agony; Finn has the presence of mind to slide off just in time.

Finn snatches a burning torch from the wall and waves it toward the cobra’s eyes. The snake reels back, afraid.

“Eyes shut. Long tunnel. Pinprick of light,” Finn instructs.

“Not going to happen: big teeth, long throat, strong tongue!” Maybeck calls, his voice distorted with pain and terror.

The snake’s tongue winds around Maybeck’s leg, then stretches out and turns the boy in advance of swallowing him whole.

Finn races up the rocks around which Jafar is coiled and shoves the burning torch into the serpent’s right eye. The snake rears back, throwing Finn off balance. Finn drops the torch.

Jafar nearly drops Maybeck, but swallows instead.

Maybeck is gone.

The cobra strikes out for Finn with his fangs, each the size of an ax handle, outstretched and dripping with fresh venom.

Then its head smacks into the rocks, missing Finn completely. Amanda teeters in the front seat of the vehicle, her arms outstretched, her body weak from her telekinetic effort.

Finn seizes the burning torch, jumps atop the snake’s body, and stabs the flame into an open wound. The snake issues a horrid sound, half cry, half gurgle, and regurgitates a slime-covered Maybeck, who smashes down onto the ground. Finn stabs again and again, his eyes spilling tears.

As the cobra sits up tall to strike again, Finn does not flinch. He grips the flaming stick with both hands, one high, one low. He closes his eyes.

The cobra attacks.

The burning torch, held up vertically like the Statue of Liberty’s, punctures the snake’s lower jaw and right through the roof of its mouth. The flame is not extinguished but continues to burn, dancing barely one foot from the snake’s horror-stricken eyes. Finn’s DHI sticks out of the reptile’s mouth too, motionless. As the snake’s jaw opens in pain, Finn falls out.

The cobra rises, waving its massive head from side to side, crying out and struggling in agony to free the torch as the heat sears its flesh. The creature slithers off into the dark, a long, anguished hiss trailing after it.

Finn rushes to Maybeck, meeting Amanda at his side. They clear the sticky goo from Maybeck’s face as he gasps for air.

Behind them, the truck’s engine rumbles back to life. Finn had not realized it had gone silent. Slumped in the seat, a dazed Jess opens her eyes.

“Quick,” Finn says, “into the truck.”

“Lightning,” Jess murmurs. “It starts and ends in lightning.…”

A
VA
G
ARDNER SUFFERS
. Though named for a long-ago glamorous movie star, she is unhappily burdened with a mannish face and the shoulders of an infantryman. It seems she was destined for security work: having dropped out of school in the tenth grade, she spent the rest of her teens collecting change in an East Coast highway tollbooth.

Working night shifts as a backstage Disneyland Security guard is a dream job. Ava belongs to a family now, and she makes it her goal to never let a single Cast Member or guest down, to pull her weight and protect the company at every opportunity. Just last week, she refused a delivery of frozen goods for improperly executed paperwork. Her superiors and coworkers agree: Ava Gardner is no slouch.

Deliveries come at all hours of the night, though few arrive after 2:00
A.M
., so Ava perks up as a truck approaches—something to relieve the boredom of manning the small booth solo. Her partner’s off napping, though he claimed he needed a bathroom break; not much escapes Ava—including sixty-thousand-pound trailer trucks with enough horses under the hood to start a stampede.

Ava fluffs her hair as she notes the color and make of the truck. She recognizes the rig, and the driver too. Some of the other drivers can really be a pain, but a few, including William, add a few skips to the beat of her heart.

But something’s odd here. It isn’t like William to grind the gears and stop short of her window, and make her step out to greet him.

“Well, hey there, sailor, whaddaya got for us tonight?” she says.

William moves mechanically on the other side of his window—a window he hasn’t rolled down so he can say hello and throw her a compliment, as he usually does. Ava feels self-conscious about her flirting; she’s never had good timing with guys and tends to hop around with one foot in her mouth. Maybe she’s gotten lucky and he didn’t hear her.

The window finally lowers. William pivots stiffly to hand her the bill of lading. She and William often share a game of acting out various celebrities or rock stars, leaving the other to guess who they are impersonating.

“David Bowie!” she exclaims excitedly. “No, no, no! It’s that other guy. You know, the one with oversize suits and spiky hair, David Something.…”

They’re always talking music. His tastes run toward early rock ’n’ roll and rockabilly; he does a pretty decent Elvis imitation.

William doesn’t even look at her; he stares overhead with lifeless, unexcited eyes.

“The robot thing,” she says. “You’re moving all jerky like that. David Whateverhisnameis.”

Nothing.

“Dang, William, you could at least say, ‘Hey, darlin’ or something.”

“Hey, darlin’ or something,” the driver says, his voice sounding a single flat note.

“More with the robot thing, huh?” Ava plays along, doing her best to make her movements look mechanical as she inspects the delivery manifest, flipping pages. “Plasticware, huh? Captain Kirk to Mr. Spork.” She waits for him to acknowledge the joke. “Mr. Spork?” she repeats. Still nothing. “You okay, William?”

“I…am…fine. Busy.”

“In a real hurry to drop off some plastic knives, are we?” Zero reaction. “Did I do something wrong, William? Something to upset you? I’m just having a little fun.”

“I…am…having…fun too.”

“You don’t have to mock me.” Ava swallows hard, telling herself she’s not going to cry in front of him. “Go on. Make your delivery. What do I care?”

She steps inside the booth and hits a button, lowering the massive concrete-and-steel barrier until it sinks level with the roadway to allow the truck to drive through. The barrier has been tested against a tank. The tank lost.

William’s shifting of the gears makes it sound like he’s forgotten how to drive. The noise causes Ava to step out of the booth once again and try to catch sight of him in the truck’s side rearview mirror. What the heck is he thinking, driving like that? The truck is barely moving as he grinds the gears for the fourth time.

Ava’s walking behind the truck now as it rolls across the barrier, while William is still searching for a gear—any gear, it would seem. Looking at the back of the trailer, Ava starts to run to catch up. She reaches out and grabs hold of something stuck to the back door just as William gets the truck rolling.

The vehicle pulls away, leaving her with a handful of what she mistakenly thought was a Davy Crockett or Tom Sawyer raccoon cap. Turns out it’s not a cap at all, but a thick tuft of animal fur, which seems somehow to have gotten snagged on the trailer door and torn off. But it’s enough hair to fill a plastic sack from the supermarket. It’s disgusting, and smelly, and…
wild
, Ava thinks. Long hair, like that of an abominable snowman—something freakish and scary.

She drops the clump of fur. It gets caught in the draft of the truck and scurries along the pavement like an unleashed rodent. It finally stops, and Ava retrieves it.

The existence of the fur bothers her. It’s the kind of thing she feels compelled to report. She’s already composing her report as she returns to the security booth: “Small chunk of fur—likely that of abominable snowman or yeti—found stuck to delivery trailer.”

If she wrote such a thing for any other company they’d have her locked up in a loony bin. But not in Disneyland!

She loves this place.