Текст книги "Disney after Dark"

Автор книги: Ridley Pearson

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

“If you could make me hand it over, you would have,” he told her. “But you can’t. For some reason, you need me to cooperate. Why is that?”

He flashed open the cape again. And again, she averted her gaze.

“He protected against this, didn’t he? Walt Disney,” Finn said as he concealed the pens and pencils again.

Maleficent dared to venture a look at the pens, her eyes sparkling, as if Finn were holding a million dollars in gold.

He took hold of the pens and held them out toward her. Maleficent cowered away from him.

“Interesting,” Finn said. “You need one of these pens or pencils, don’t you? But which one?”

He stepped forward. She moved back, and away, ducking behind the nearest column. “The real quill can hurt you, can’t it? Dull your powers?” He understood then. This was how Wayne could stop the Overtakers.

“It can stop your plans, this pen, can’t it? You need to get rid of it. Destroy it. Even just its existence has threatened you all these years.”

“What do you know? You’re just a boy! And we all know little boys shouldn’t play with fire.”

With that, she pretended she was bowling. A large ball of fire rolled from her hand and across the floor at Finn. He dodged it easily enough, but then came a second, and a third.

Jez “caught” the balls of fire on the opposite side and bowled them back toward Maleficent.

Finn, trapped in the middle, danced to avoid the flames.

A ball singed his cape. He couldn’t keep this up for long. He found himself hopping around like an Irish step dancer.

“You will do exactly as I say,” Maleficent instructed him, still bowling her fireballs at him.

Finn understood what he had to do. Dodging the fire as he landed, he scattered several of the pens across the stone floor. A ball of fire tumbled toward the pens.

“No!” the witch shouted. With a wave of her hand, the flaming balls vanished into wisps of black smoke and the tangy smell that follows a lightning storm.

So, Finn thought, she doesn’t want to destroy the pen, and she can’t touch it herself. She has a use for it, but is also afraid of its power.

“You think yourself so clever?” she called out angrily. She walked right through his electric cage, straight for the pens.

Finn dove across the floor, swept them up into his hand, and sprinted for the white sparking fence. She had passed through without so much as a spark.

When he was crossed over, Finn had been able to walk through walls and counter the currents of Splash Mountain by concentrating on the DHI essence of his crossed-over body. So why not pass through this electric fence unharmed?

He focused on the single idea: I am light. I am nothing but light. Nothing can stop me if I’m nothing but light. Nothing can harm me if I’m—

Wham!

Reaching the fence at full stride, he was knocked back off his feet and onto the floor. He felt as if he’d been stabbed in the chest.

Maleficent seemed to float, not walk, as she approached. She towered over him. Scowling, the witch raised her arm, about to deliver a spell. Finn clutched the pens and jumped toward her, lightning fast. He thrust the pens in her face. Sparks flew as the pens connected with Maleficent.

She flew back and fell to the stone floor.

“Your Grace?” Jez called out.

The witch lay on the stone floor, stunned. The electric fence sputtered.

Finn stepped closer to the fallen witch, the pens held in front of him like a sword. She recoiled, expecting him to strike again.

“Lower the fence!” he instructed Jez. He never took his eyes off Maleficent. She seemed to be gaining her strength back. “Lower the fence, or I’ll do it again,” Finn warned.

The bars of buzzing white lines sparked twice more and then vanished.

“Release Amanda and Charlene,” he told her. When Jez hesitated, he stepped closer to Maleficent. The feeling of cold increased. Her strength was indeed returning. He needed Jez to do this quickly, before her mother came to her senses.

He stabbed at Maleficent with the fistful of pens. A second burst of sparks threw her down again.

“Okay!” Jez exclaimed. She waved her hands. “It’s done.”

Finn backed up and reached the stairway.

A weakened Maleficent lifted her head and said, “We will meet again, young man. We have unfinished business, you and I.”

Finn turned and ran.

31

The kids needed the plans that had been stolen from Finn at One Man’s Dream, and no one had any doubts as to who had taken them. Maleficent would return for the pen—the Stonecutter’s Quil

–with a vengeance. Whatever powers the pen and the plans possessed when combined, each side had their reasons for wanting what the other now possessed.

Before he left Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, Finn paid Wayne a visit to explain the night’s events.

“It’s always such a noisy night,” Wayne complained. He looked silly dressed in a pair of pajamas and a plaid robe. He wore Mickey and Minnie Mouse fuzzy slippers.

“We need your help.”

“So it would seem. So it would seem.” Wayne paced his small apartment over the fire station, glancing out the windows occasionally. Finn heard him mutter, “When will they go home?” Then he paced some more. “Two birds with one stone,” he said, now addressing Finn.

“How’s that?” Finn asked, impatient to hook back up with his friends and leave the park.

“I can help you—will help you—but it won’t come without additional risk to us all. She has to be desperate to be bowling fire at your feet. Revealing herself like that.” He studied the pens spread out on the small dining table, where Finn had put them. “You’ll keep all of these, because they’ve obviously come in handy. Tomorrow’s the day. They’ll be expecting you by night, of course, because that’s when you’re usually here. So it can’t be night. It must be day. Furthermore, if you’re to secure the plans, then you must be a boy, not crossed over.”

“But we can touch and hold things when we’re crossed over. I can get those plans back.”

“You can’t do that where I’m sending you,” Wayne countered. “You’ll have to be yourself. The others as well. And you’ll need disguises, or you’ll get caught.” Wayne paused, thinking hard.

“Cast-member costumes, you understand? Employees. Each of you. I can help there as well.”

“But why? Where are you sending us?”

“You showed me,” Wayne said. “I might have never figured this out by myself.”

“Showed you what?”

“Where’s the one place that a weakened Maleficent can hide without being questioned?”

“Here in the park.”

“I mean, where in the park?”

“Whatever ride, whatever attraction she’s part of.”

“But that’s the point. She isn’t part of one,” Wayne answered. “Her role is over at the studios.

She’s in Fantasmics. That’s all she does here—that one show. She turns herself into the dragon.

Maybe in real life as well.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m an old man talking to himself, that’s all. Back to the important question: where can she hide in the Magic Kingdom?”

“Out in the open?” Finn guessed.

“Precisely. And if I were her, if I’d stolen these plans and then led boys down to my secret lair, I would need someplace new to lay low. The boys might tell people about the dungeons. They could be searched. I could be caught. I need a place no one can find me.”

“But where?” Finn asked, feeling as if they were talking in circles.

“We’ll need all five of you to dress as cast members. You’ll meet me at the Transportation and Ticket Center, bus stop number five, at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Can you make that?”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday. Probably. I suppose so.”

“Make sure you do,” he advised.

“What did you mean by ‘two birds with one stone’?”

“We’re going to use her own tactics against her. If you manage to get the plans, she’ll come after you. She’ll want to stop you from getting them to me, especially now that she knows you have the pen.”

“So?”

“You’re going to lead her into a trap.” His old eyes brightened.

“You’re going to use us as bait?”

Wayne looked at Finn. His features softened. “How terribly impolite of me. It has been so long, you see. We’re so close now. So very close.” He straightened up and looked Finn in the eye.

“I need your help—yours and the others’—in catching Maleficent. It is a task not without risk, but one I assure you well worth the effort, if you’re game. This is, I believe, what Walt had intended all along—the capture of an Overtaker, the beginning of the end for them.” He paused and allowed Finn to think through his proposal. Then he asked, “So? Will you help me?”

At nine the next morning, Finn stood with the others in line at bus stop number five at the Transportation and Ticket Center.

A large bus pulled up. The door swung open, and from behind the wheel Wayne motioned them inside. “Well?” the old guy said, “Hurry it up!”

The kids piled on, and Wayne shut the door and drove off. They were all alone in the otherwise empty bus.

“There isn’t time,” Wayne said. “There’s a bag for each of you.”

Finn’s name was written on one of five grocery bags. Inside was a costume.

“Put it on,” Wayne instructed. “Ladies to the back.”

Some blankets had been strung across the rear seats to provide the girls privacy.

“Gentlemen up front.”

Wayne turned the bus at the next corner, and the boys, all in various degrees of undress, had to hold on to keep their balance.

Wayne picked up the microphone and announced so the girls could hear as well, “I’ll bring you in around the back of the park at Frontierland. You’ll enter the tunnels from there.”

“Tunnels?” Finn asked.

“After that, it’s up to the five of you, I’m afraid.”

When the boys were dressed, Charlene and Willa came forward. Willa wore an old-fashioned blue-striped dress and a puffy-sleeved blouse printed with pastel flowers, the uniform of food-service workers in Frontierland. Charlene wore a skirt and top of a deckhand on the paddle wheel steamboat that circled Tom Sawyer Island.

“Listen, all of you! There’s a schedule in place we must keep to in order for this to work.”

Wayne was one of the worst drivers Finn had ever met. The bus nearly sideswiped two cars, then veered left and scraped its wheels against the curb, before smashing back down to the roadway.

“Okay, we’re listening,” Finn said, realizing that the old goat was agitated.

Philby was dressed as a boatman on the Jungle Cruise. Finn was a newspaper boy from Main Street. Maybeck wore a turban-topped outfit from the Magic Carpets of Aladdin.

Wayne pulled the bus over and threw open the door. Amanda boarded.

“She is necessary to our plans,” Wayne announced.

Amanda looked Finn in the eye and then, without saying anything, took a seat in the middle of the bus.

Wayne explained, “Amanda has the run of the place. She’s not on the DHI watch list. She’ll act as sentry and guide when you need her.”

Now inside the Magic Kingdom, Wayne slowed the bus next to a large white building that, according to its sign, had something to do with waste disposal. A wide metal tube, connected to the building, extended out from an earthen bank. A paved road led up the rise to a very large double gate in the wooden wall. Flowers and shrubs covered a small hill that bordered a tall wooden fence, which was behind Frontierland.

Wayne spun to face them, still behind the wheel. He nervously checked his wristwatch. “You’ll wear these ID tags around your necks at all times. But turn them so they face in, so the ID picture doesn’t show.” Wayne had borrowed some ID tags for them.

“What’s this building?” Maybeck asked. Dressed as Ali Baba, or whoever he was, Finn thought he looked pretty cool.

Wayne answered. “This is important to you, Finn. Have you ever seen a garbage bag being carried around inside the park?” Wayne asked.

All five shook their heads.

“This building is why. All the park’s trash travels underground through a series of steel tubes.

Those tubes terminate here, where the trash is compacted, and then shipped off to a dump. The process is automated. I’ve briefed Amanda.”

She remained in the back, silent and studious. Briefed Amanda about the trash? Finn wondered. He kept his mouth shut.

“Once I get you inside,” Wayne instructed, “you’re on your own. The Utilidor here—that’s what the park tunnels are called—is complicated and big. The corridors are more like underground roads than sidewalks. There are golf carts and electric buggies down there, so keep alert and don’t get hit. Cast members know the Utilidor well, and you’re cast members now. You’ll need to look comfortable.”

“What about Maleficent?” Finn asked. “The plans?”

“Terrence,” Wayne said to Maybeck, “what’s likely the coldest room in an office building?”

“The computer room,” Maybeck answered. “The server center.”

“So where’s the safest, most comfortable place for someone who likes the cold to spend time?”

“A refrigerator?” Charlene answered, not paying enough attention.

“One possibility, yes, and one that you and Willa will pursue. There’s an entire section of the Utilidor devoted to cold food storage.”

“The computer center,” Maybeck said, answering Wayne’s question.

“The servers are housed at the back of what we call the Control Room. That’s for you and the boys.” Wayne warned them, “Stay alert for a sudden drop in temperature. That’s what you’re looking for. The missing plans won’t be far away. We need those plans.” Wayne looked troubled and concerned. “The point is, from what Finn described, he wounded Maleficent. Weakened her.

He also made it impossible for her to remain below Pirates of the Caribbean. I believe she’s taken to the Utilidor, where, looking like a cast member, no one would question or detain her. Your job is to get those plans from her and to flush her out. To draw her out. We will handle the rest.”

“We?” Philby asked.

“You leave that to me, young man.” He looked between all six kids, for now Amanda was standing just behind Finn. “Are you ready?”

A moment of hesitation settled over the kids. Then, one by one, they nodded. Even Charlene.

Wayne’s face brightened again. “Once you’ve got the plans and you’re topside,” he said,

“that’s when the chase begins. I’m afraid you may literally need to run for your lives. Maleficent is not likely to be a good loser. Finn takes the plans. Amanda will guide him back here.” Again, Wayne took a moment to make eye contact with each of the kids. He ended with Finn. “You’ll do exactly as she says.”

Finn glanced back at Amanda.

He didn’t feel good about this. She revealed nothing of what she might be thinking.

Finn felt there was an unusually strong bond between Wayne and Amanda. Were they related somehow? Without question, Finn thought, Amanda was no ordinary girl.

Wayne threw the bus door open, and the kids hurried out.

32

Inside the Magic Kingdom, the sun shone brightly. Finn’s costume warmed up. He thought the air smelled like Thanksgiving. It took him a minute to spot the turkey leg being gnawed on by a big man wearing a Hard Rock Cafe shirt.

The six kids and Wayne passed into the park through a high wooden fence, with Thunder Mountain to their right. Past the ride and through another door marked for cast members, they entered a room with dull green walls. They saw an elevator door, scratched and in need of paint, with a single arrow pointing down. A large sign bolted to the cinderblock wallabove the adjacent set of descending stairs cautioned: CAST MEMBERS ONLY PLEASE.

“I’ll go first,” Wayne announced. “Girls, you’ll follow me to food service. Terrence, you know what you’re looking for. Good luck, everyone.”

Finn felt his throat catch. There was only one reason Wayne could be doing this so soon on the heels of the previous night.

It isn’t safe.

They had to accomplish this before Maleficent regained all her powers. Though Finn wondered what would become of them if she already had.

Wayne’s white head bobbed down the stairs, followed closely by Charlene and then Willa.

The boys heard a heavy door open and close. Then silence. Finn’s throat was bone-dry. His palms were sweating.

Maybeck went first. He descended the stairs, suddenly consumed by shadow. Again, the sound of the door opening and falling shut.

That door swallowed his friends. He hoped he’d see them again.

Philby went next.

Finn then worked his way down and, hand on the door, reminded himself to stay calm. He tugged on the door and opened it to a strange, unfamiliar world. They found themselves in a tunnel that ran a great distance in both directions. People in Disney costumes walked in groups while battery-operated vehicles plied the corridors.

The Utilidor was physically much wider, much bigger—enormous, really!—than Finn had imagined it would be: an underground road of sorts with doors leading from it.

Actors dressed as nonhuman animated Disney characters, like Mickey and Minnie and Donald Duck, paraded past, each wearing or carrying a mask large enough to cover their whole head. There were others dressed as human characters, wearing makeup but without masks—

Belle and Snow White, Peter Pan, and Mulan. The walkarounds, they were called.

A small electric truck zoomed past, stacked high with cans of soda and bottled water. Finn looked to see Charlene and Willa headed in the same direction the truck was going.

He followed a short distance behind Philby, who in turn followed Maybeck. The boys were now moving in the opposite direction from the girls.

Overhead, along the tunnel’s ceiling, thick cables and pipes hung. No Disney music played down here. Instead the boys heard only the whine of the vehicles, the steady whoosh of piped-in air, and the gentle murmur of voices.

Finn passed a girl with Cinderella’s hair and face. But she wore blue jeans and a tank top, not yet in costume.

The boys walked briskly for well over five minutes before finally coming to another tunnel.

Maybeck followed the signs as Wayne had told him. This new tunnel gradually sloped downward, leveled out, and ran another fifty yards before climbing again, then it dead-ended at yet another busy tunnel. Finn followed to the right, Philby and Maybeck just ahead.

Offices and unidentified rooms lined the route. It was extremely busy down here, with people coming and going like worker bees. Finn caught a glimpse of a cafeteria. He passed signs for the PROPERTY ROOM, a barber shop, and a women’s hair salon. A city! The tunnel veered left.

Philby and Maybeck slowed and pretended to read from a bulletin board.

“It’s just up ahead,” Maybeck said in a low voice. “The timing is critical because there’s a coffee break coming up. Wayne thinks our best shot at getting in there is during the coffee break.”

Finn took a sip from a water fountain, stealing a look down the hall. They waited. A few minutes later three workers—two men and a woman—left the door marked CONTROL ROOM.

The boys approached the door and entered.

Inside they faced row after row of steel shelving, like bookshelves in a library, floor to ceiling.

Instead of books, the shelves were filled with thousands of tiny blinking lights, red, yellow and orange: rack-mounted computers.

It was chilly in here.

Maybeck hurried down the second-to-last row, saying softly, “Wayne’s point is that no one will notice Maleficent’s cold aura in a cold place like this. He said the servers are in a back room.”

Sure enough, they soon stood facing several steel doors, all unmarked.

Finn stepped forward and touched the back of his hand to each door in succession. The middle door was noticeably colder.

Finn wondered for how many years—how many decades—Maleficent had been confined to the various tunnels and lairs beneath the Magic Kingdom. It seemed no wonder she’d turned to the dark side of her powers.

“How do we do this?” Maybeck asked, now that he’d led them here.

“I don’t think we knock,” Philby said.

“Actually…maybe we do,” Finn said, surprising the other two. He thought for a minute and said, “Have either of you ever run track?”

Maybeck nodded.

“How about the relay?” Finn asked.

Maybeck nodded again.

“Drivers, start your engines,” Finn said. He pulled the boys into a three-way huddle and told them his plan.

“Knock, knock!” Finn said loudly. “It’s your favorite Disney Host Interactive,” he announced. He kept one eye on the wallclock. The coffee break was scheduled to last fifteen minutes. Six of those minutes were behind them.

No answer. Seven minutes gone; eight minutes remaining.

“I’ve come to offer you a deal.”

Spines of ice crept up the edges of the closed door. Finn could picture the witch standing just on the other side. His knees felt weak, but he had to go through with this.

He raised his voice. “We’re through. We’re done. Wayne—he’s an old guy who sent us here to steal something from you—but we’ve had a change of heart. We want to destroy the server. The computer that generates our DHIs. We don’t want to do this anymore.” Still nothing, though the ice on the door thickened. “We don’t know which server it is. We don’t know what to do. You help us – without hurting us—and we’ll give you the pens.”

The doorknob went white with frost. She was holding it from the other side.

“You’re thinking this is a trap,” Finn said. “And you’re right to think that. But it isn’t. We just want to go home. We want to sleep at night. Please…help us, and you’ll have what you want.”

The doorknob turned.

Maleficent stood in the doorway. She had not fully recovered from Finn’s zapping her the night before. She looked older, slightly yellow in the cheeks. Behind her, on a stack of more computers, Finn saw the scroll of plans she had stolen from him at One Man’s Dream.

Finn and Maybeck backed up a step. Philby was nowhere to be seen.

“Which server?” Finn asked.

“And we need whatever back-up server they have, as well,” Maybeck said. “Once we’re gone, we don’t want them able to bring us back.”

Maleficent glared at them with her eyelids lowered menacingly. She was either half dead or ready to kill.

“I’m sorry for what I did,” Finn said. “I didn’t know.” Finn realized he’d zapped a good deal of the power from her. He’d drained her. She was like a battery running out of juice.

She said nothing, just stood there blinking, looking devilish. She gathered her strength and said, “Jez likes you, or I would have hurt you last night when I had the chance.”

“That’s comforting to know,” Finn said. “I’ll put down the pens. You can have it. But first you’ll show us the right server.”

“First the pens,” she said. “You think I’d trust you like that?”

“And why should I trust you?”

“This is your idea, not mine. Besides, once I have the pen, what threat are you?”

Finn concealed his smirk as he shrugged. “Have it your way,” he said.

He withdrew the group of pens and pencils from his pocket and placed them on the ground.

Maleficent approached them like a kid nearing a Christmas tree. She seemed to have more energy. Her eyes flared open in expectation.

Finn took several more steps backward, Maybeck right next to him.

But behind Maleficent, the door to the back room swung slowly away from the wall, and there stood Philby. In his right hand Philby clutched a fistful of pens and pencils tightly.

Maleficent bent toward the pens on the floor, clearly cautious. But as she drew closer she saw modern brand names on the pens. She looked up through fiery eyes.

“Now!” Finn shouted.

Philby charged from behind and did just as Finn had told him: holding the pens extended, he drove his fist into the witch.

At that same moment, she turned around.

A blinding flash erupted as the pens made contact. Maleficent rose from the floor and was thrown violently past Finn and Maybeck and into the heavy black shelves.

Maybeck sprinted forward into the back room, grabbed the roll of plans, and headed for the main door. Philby, stunned by what he’d done, passed the pens to Finn, leaving behind on the floor the pens the boys had collected from a desk at the front of the control room.

Philby was next out the door.

“What’s going on here?” A big man blocked Finn’s exit.

Just then a shower of sparks and spurts of flame rose from where Maleficent lay pinned to the computer shelves, impaled onto a stack of electrical outlets and surge suppressors. As the electricity flowed through her body, beneath the smoke and spitting sparks, Finn saw her skin color return to a rich green. The electricity fed her.

“What—is—that—?” asked the office manager.

Maleficent’s bloodshot eyes flashed open and locked onto Finn. He’d never seen eyes so angry, so mean and vicious. So powerful. And they were aimed at him. Only at him.

The office manager staggered toward a fire extinguisher hanging from the wall.

Finn made for the door.

Maleficent pulled herself loose from the metal shelving as a shower of sparks cascaded overhead and cried, “Aaaah! I needed that!”

She flew out the door. Literally.

The office manager fainted.