The 39 Clues Unstoppable Book 3 Countdown (21 page)

Through the chaos and the noise, she heard Dan calling to her: “Amy! Help! Help!”

Dan. She had to help Dan. She kicked and punched at anything that touched her, scratching and clawing until, at last, the attacks stopped.

Everything went quiet. Her vision cleared, the fog melting away. The somethings were gone. Had they been howler monkeys, or men? She didn’t know. She was standing by a ruined wall in the moonlight, alone.

“Dan!” she shouted. “Pony! Where are you?”

She heard shouting a little distance away. She ran back to the loggers’ clearing. The noises grew louder. The
huff huff huff
of a chopper’s blades whirred overhead. A black helicopter hovered over the clearing, preparing to land.

Two thugs, their faces scratched and bloody, grabbed her. Her strength surged again, and she knocked them to the ground where they remained, motionless.

The chopper blades whipped up a wind as it landed in the clearing, sending dirt and leaves flying. Amy shielded her face and backed away. Under the chopper, on the other side of it, she saw feet running toward the chopper door. She dashed across the clearing, ducking under the whirring rotors.
Dan!
Two soldiers were dragging him into the chopper. Another held Pony back as they shut Dan inside. Then he let Pony go and hurried into the chopper himself. Pierce’s men were leaving, and they were taking Dan with them.

“Dan! No!” Amy screamed, and ran for the chopper. But Pony was closer. He dove for the landing skid, clutching it as the copter lifted off the ground.

“Pony! Let go!” Amy tried to leap into the air and grab the skid herself, but it was too high. The machine took off, Pony’s legs dangling just out of her reach. She jumped as high as she could, but it wasn’t enough.

The helicopter soared up over the trees, Pony clinging to the bottom. He was hanging on by his fingertips, his face pinched with the strain, his tongue poking out of his mouth in concentration. She could just make out Dan’s frantic face pressed to the window, and behind him, a thug watching Pony and laughing. Amy held her breath. It was too late for Pony to let go now — the chopper was too high.

“Hang on!” she shouted. “Hang on!”

Pony’s legs brushed the top of a tree. He tried to step on a branch, as if he might land there, but it wasn’t solid enough. Amy thought she could see the muscles in his arms quivering, using all his strength.

Amy wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn’t. She kept hoping a hand would reach out of the chopper door and pull Pony to safety, that some miracle would happen. . . . She found herself reaching for him, jumping up over and over as if she could spring into the air and save him.

But she was rooted to the ground, and he dangled in the sky, helpless.

One of his hands slipped off the skid. He hung on for his life by one sweaty hand.

The chopper lifted higher, far above the trees now. Pony strained his free hand toward the skid, trying to grab hold, but he couldn’t reach it. His shoulder snapped out of position, dislocating.

And then the other hand slipped off. Down he fell.

Amy screamed as she watched his tiny figure drop from the sky and disappear among the trees. The chopper floated away.

The jungle went quiet.

Amy stood alone in the clearing. The chopper was gone. Dan was gone. Pony was surely dead.

She ran into the jungle, hoping for a miracle. Praying to find Pony alive.

She sped through the dense trees, jumping over obstacles and ripping at vines that blocked her way.

She must have run about a mile when she found him. Pony’s body had landed on the branch of a tree, twenty feet overhead, his back arched at an unnatural angle, broken. His head hung back, his ponytail dangling, his mouth gaping, moonlight glowing in his open, glassy eyes.

Amy’s legs buckled under her. She collapsed on the damp ground. The strength drained out of her now, leaving her nearly paralyzed.

Pony is dead. He’s dead.

He died trying to save me.

And Dan is gone.

She was a failure. She had failed in every way.

Tears leaked out of her eyes. She couldn’t stop them. She lay in the damp dirt and sobbed. She’d had all that power. The power of Gideon’s serum. Unfathomable strength of body, mind, and will. And what good did it do her? The side effects were getting worse. She was declining every day. And yet, somehow, she had to find the superhuman power to get up. To rescue Dan. To keep going after the antidote. Because without it, they were all doomed.

She rested a little while longer until she felt some strength return to her legs. Then, as dawn broke, she hoisted herself to her feet and made her trudging, defeated, heartbroken way through the teeming jungle, back to the hotel.

She would break the news to the others. They would be horrified, and mourn. But they would summon their last scraps of will and continue the fight. There was nothing else to do.

Sneak Peek

Time is running out for Amy Cahill. If she doesn’t find the remaining ingredients, the serum will kill her. And if she doesn’t rescue Dan, the Pierces will kill him. Will the Cahills find a way to beat the impossible odds?

Find out in the explosive conclusion to The 39 Clues: Unstoppable:
Flashpoint
by Gordon Korman. Turn the page for a sneak peek!

The Jeep hit an exposed root, jouncing eighteen inches straight up and nearly launching the four occupants into the jungle underbrush.

Instead of slowing down, Amy Cahill stomped on the gas, coaxing even more speed out of the rickety four-wheeler.

“Everybody okay?” called Jake Rosenbloom from the passenger seat, hanging on to the roll bar.

“Barely,” groaned Ian Kabra. “I nearly lost my computer, not to mention my lunch.”

“Ponyrific,” Jake replied soberly, using Pony’s nickname for his custom laptop. “It’s all we have left of — him.”

The brilliant Pony had built the machine himself, using components from some of the best computers anywhere. It was a magnificent machine, but it could never replace the magnificent friend who’d been taken from them.

Another bump sent passengers bouncing around the Jeep.

“I thought the rental agent said this was a good road,” Ian complained in his clipped British accent.

“In actuality,” put in Atticus Rosenbloom, Jake’s younger brother, “she never said it was
good
. She just said it was better than the roads in Honduras.”

“You asked me to research the Tonle Sap water snake,” Ian persisted. “With all this tossing about, I can’t find the T key. Not even Pony could work under these conditions. Do slow down, Amy!”

Amy let up a little on the accelerator. Thanks to her serum-boosted acuity of vision, she had actually watched Pony’s grip on the chopper’s skid fail, sending him plunging to his death. Loyal Pony — who wasn’t even a Cahill — had offered his digital cowboy skills to their quest. And the cost had been his life.

Amy’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. That was the helicopter that had flown off with Dan. For all she knew, at this very moment, her younger brother was being tortured.

For all she knew, he was as dead as Pony.

To keep from screaming, she pressed harder on the accelerator, and the Jeep leaped forward, rattling and rocking along the dirt road.

“As much as I hate to agree with Ian,” Jake ventured, “this is crazy driving. We’re not going to be able to help anybody if we hit a tree.”

“We’re not going to hit a tree,” returned Amy through clenched teeth. “I’m in total control of this car.”

“Good to know,” Ian said smoothly, “because I left my spleen about twelve kilometers back.”

“But, Amy,” Jake persisted, “We need to talk about
why
you’re in total control of this car —
why
you can drive like a NASCAR champion on a road meant for ox carts.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Amy snapped. “I took the serum. Stop worrying. I’m fine!”

She
was
fine. Better than fine, and not just because the serum was making her faster and stronger with every passing hour. Her thinking was clear. She could plan strategic moves and countermoves almost to infinity. Her eyesight was amazing, her hearing acute, her reaction time virtually instantaneous. She had no superpowers — she couldn’t lift locomotives or fly through the air. Yet her natural capabilities were enhanced to the
n
th degree.

No sooner had this thought crossed her soaring mind than the pinkie of her left hand began to twitch slightly against the wheel. Under normal circumstances, she would not even have noticed it. But in her heightened state of acuity, she understood that this tiny spasm represented the beginning of the end. It was Amy’s future — the loss of control; the organ failure; the terrible, painful conclusion. The serum was glorious — until it wasn’t. And that, apparently, happened very quickly. The stuff could burn out a human being inside of a week. Amy would suffer the same fate if they couldn’t come up with the antidote.

How crazy was that? She’d never felt better in her life — and she was dying.

Suddenly, an enormous logging truck roared out of the trees, looming above, almost upon them, its broad cab hogging most of the road. Before any of them could shout, “Amy, look out!” she was on it. Her reaction was lightning fast — the instant her eyes identified the danger, her hands were moving the steering wheel. She found the path that hadn’t been there milliseconds earlier, squeezing through an impossible gap with mere inches to spare. Then they were back on the road, full speed ahead, as if nothing had happened.

For a few breathless seconds, no one spoke. Before, there hadn’t been enough time to scream; now it was no longer necessary.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Amy,” Ian managed at last. “But at the moment, I’m really glad you swallowed that serum.”

No normal driver could have avoided that truck. Gideon’s formula may have been a death sentence, but it had just saved all their lives.

At that moment, the Jeep suffered one tremendous jolt before the ride leveled off, becoming not only smoother but quieter as well.

Jake was instantly alert. “What happened? What did we hit?”

“Pavement,” supplied Atticus, daring to look over the side. “We must be getting close to Guatemala City.”

With the better road conditions, Ian was able to return to his research on Pony’s laptop. “The Tonle Sap water snake,” he reported. “Scientific name:
Enhydris longicauda
. A slightly venomous colubrid snake native to the Tonle Sap, Cambodia’s Great Lake. It’s a close relative of the sea leopard snake, the rice paddy snake, and the Kapuas mud snake.”

“‘Slightly venomous’?” Atticus repeated. “What does that mean — when it bites you, you only get a little bit dead?”

“If you think about it,” mused Amy, “the venom can’t be deadly or it wouldn’t work as part of the antidote. It’s not much of a cure if it kills everybody who takes it.”

“All the colubrid snakes are slightly venomous,” Ian continued his report. “There are nearly two thousand different species of them. And — uh-oh —”

“What is it?” asked Jake.

“The Red List of Threatened Species lists ours as vulnerable. That’s only one step better than endangered. Apparently, this part of Cambodia is big on crocodile farming, and the Tonle Sap water snake was a widely used crocodile food. The only problem is the crocs can eat them faster than the snakes can reproduce.”

Amy frowned. “Five hundred years ago, when the antidote was created, they were probably all over the place.”

“That won’t help us
now
,” Jake put in nervously. “We need that venom!”

“Relax.” Amy’s reply sounded more like an order. “We got whiskers from an extinct leopard; we can find venom from a threatened snake.” She glanced in the rearview mirror to find a quizzical expression on Ian’s fine features. “What’s the problem?”

“I think Pony’s computer is trying to tell me something,” Ian replied. He swiveled the screen toward Atticus. “You see that? ‘Code A’? What do you think it means?”

Atticus shrugged. He was an eleven-year-old genius, but his area of expertise was dead languages and ancient civilizations. Computer technology was several centuries too recent for him.