39
Alisha wasn’t sure what had been more shocking: the possibility the cops were coming to arrest them all, or that Mr. Kain, Jenni, and some others had followed them back to Earth.
She sat on Brandon’s back and looked at the ground below.
They had passed the lights of Richland, Washington, several minutes before, flying north. They were over the Columbia River, and to their left lay the Hanford site. Alisha couldn’t see much in the darkness. It was probably around eleven o’clock, and the area was largely devoid of features or lights except for a few pockets here and there.
Mrs. Minch’s discoveries that afternoon had scared them and they had waited anxiously for Brandon’s return. Mrs. Minch had told Zoe to do what she could to put the police off their track and on to Mr. Kain’s. Then they had turned off any device that might give away their position: cell phones, netbooks and other computers.
Brandon finally arrived and they had mounted up and flown northwest.
Their plan was simple, at least they hoped so. They would fly in to an area with the most contained waste and perform the ritual to get them back to Mother — toxins and all.
All Alisha knew was she wanted to be done with this as soon as possible. She didn’t want to go back, but didn’t see any other options.
Brandon banked to the left, heading west, away from the river. Their initial landing point was a small mountain in the center of the site called Gable Mountain. From there, they could get a better look at things and decide if their plan would still work.
The site itself was huge, nearly six hundred square miles according to the information they found on the Internet. It was the largest environmental cleanup project in the world. From what they could determine, most of the contaminated water, sludge and soil was being moved and handled in two different areas near the middle of the Hanford site. It was there they hoped to find what they needed.
It was three or four miles from the river to the mountain, and Brandon glided most of the way in. He descended and touched down on the southern face, near the top.
They unstrapped and got down to stretch their legs. The flight had been about three hours from Alisha’s house, and they were keyed up with anticipation. The first of the storage and treatment areas was about two miles south of the mountain. Alisha could make out lights from several large buildings and parking lots.
“All right,” Brandon said after looking around. “Let’s get to it. Mrs. Minch, is your earth spirit picking up anything?”
Mrs. Minch frowned. “Yes, but it doesn’t make sense.”
“Why? What’s wrong?” Brandon asked.
“It says there is a large amount of wrongness beneath us.”
Brandon thought for a moment. “Maybe it’s just sensing some contaminated water or something.”
Mrs. Minch shook her head. “It doesn’t think so. It says that it can feel wrongness all over, but this is particularly strong.”
Brandon sighed. “Okay, let’s check it out. If we can find something here close, that would be better anyway.”
They mounted up again and Brandon flew low and circled the mountain.
Something caught Alisha’s eye as they rounded the western edge. “What’s that?” she shouted and pointed.
It looked like an old tunnel or mine shaft going into the mountain.
Brandon banked and landed on an old dirt road. It did indeed lead to a tunnel that was fenced and boarded closed.
“I remember seeing something about tunnels in this mountain in the information we found,” Mrs. Minch said. “The government looked into the idea of storing the waste here, but it said they abandoned that plan in the eighties and filled all the tunnels in.”
“Well, this one doesn’t seem very filled in,” Brandon said. “Let’s have a look.”
They walked up the road to the entrance. Chain link fence and barbed wire greeted them. Beyond those, Alisha could see the shaft was not filled in, but simply boarded up.
“Does Zoe see any cameras or anything?” Brandon asked.
Mrs. Minch shook her head. “No, she says it’s clear. The earth spirit says what it’s feeling is definitely that way.” She indicated the tunnel.
“Stand back,” Brandon said. When everyone was clear, he took a breath and sprayed the fence with the acid from his mouth. The fence steamed and sizzled, and shortly began to fall apart. Brandon walked up and pushed the bits and pieces aside, then tore the boards away with his front feet, exposing the shaft into the mountain. He poked his head in, but he was much too big to fit inside.
“Looks clear from what I can see.” Brandon pointed at two of the Gobinstratstorai. “You go in and have a look, Todd, you too. See what’s in there.”
Todd grumbled, but followed the two guards into the tunnel.
Alisha waited impatiently with the rest of them for several minutes, jumping at every noise she heard. After what seemed like an eternity, Todd and the guards returned.
“Bingo,” he said. “There’s an elevator a little ways in that goes down to a big cavern. The place is packed with drums that have that nuclear skull and crossbones thingy on them.”
Brandon smiled. “Perfect! Will you guys be able to move them?”
Todd nodded. “Yeah I think so. It’ll take us a little while, but I think we can roll them out without too much trouble.”
Brandon nodded to the other guards. “Okay, have at it.”
Alisha found a boulder a short distance from the tunnel entrance and sat down to wait while the boys moved barrels.
She looked at the sky and saw a few high clouds had moved in from the west, covering most of the stars overhead. She thought again of her parents, and, even though they didn’t care for her, she realized she still wanted to stay. She sorely hoped that Mogritas would keep his word about letting them come back when he had what he wanted, but she doubted it. Mogritas would do what he wanted. Alisha understood that.
She thought briefly about running, but where could she go? She was in the middle of a government installation, miles from home. She’d be picked up and arrested for trespassing, at the very least.
Todd and the Gobinstratstorai worked for over an hour. Eventually, they had a collection of thirty drums. They were black, oil-type drums with the big yellow and red stickers on the side that shouted “Hazardous Waste!”
Everyone gathered outside the tunnel entrance for the ritual. Alisha stayed as far away as possible from the drums.
Mrs. Minch sat down and closed her eyes, but a frown soon developed on her face.
“Something’s wrong,” she said after a few minutes.
“What?” Brandon said irritably.
“The spirits say the lines of force are wrong here.”
Brandon sighed. “From the waste? Maybe if we don’t try to bring as much —”
“No, that’s not it. They say Mother has many more lines of force, whatever those are, and they could match them up easier. But here, there aren’t as many and they can’t do whatever they need to do to make them work.” Mrs. Minch groaned in disgust.
“So,” Brandon said, “this place won’t work to get us back?”
Mrs. Minch nodded. “That’s what it sounds like.”
“Well then, what place would work? Do they know?”
Alisha thought of it. “Home! I mean, the lake we went to on the field trip. It worked before.”
Brandon nodded. “Makes sense. What do they think Mrs. Minch?”
“Seems like the best bet,” she replied.
“Okay, so how do we move all of this stuff to Boise? I wouldn’t be able to carry more than four probably without some special harnesses or something. I’m sure Mogritas would want as much as possible.”
“So, what,” Alisha asked. “We need a truck or something?”
Mrs. Minch shook her head. “I wouldn’t know how to drive something like that.”
“I do,” Todd chimed in for the first time. “I spent part of last summer on my uncle’s sugar beet farm in Mont
ana. He taught me how to drive the big trucks he uses to haul the beets to the processing plant.”
Alisha laughed. “So we’re supposed to steal a truck, load it with a bunch of barrels of hazardous waste and drive it out of here — just like that?”
Brandon smiled. “Yep. And I think that’s where you come in, Alisha.”
“Me?” she said in surprise.
* * * *
Brandon had the guards and Mrs. Minch stay with the barrels while he took Alisha and Todd to one of the parking lots of the first treatment area. He dropped them off in the darkness, away from any lights, and made himself invisible to wait.
Alisha didn’t like the plan one bit.
Todd stayed hidden near Brandon. He had come to make sure whatever kind of truck she found was something he’d be able to drive.
The parking lot had a few cars parked randomly near one of the buildings, and a long row of cargo vehicles along the fence at the northern edge. There was a small guard post that marked the entrance to the lot. Alisha headed for it.
She strolled into the light, looking much more confident than she felt. The guard occupying the post didn’t see her at first, his attention was on a computer monitor, but then noticed the movement and looked up in surprise.
Alisha was sure it wasn’t every day a pretty girl walked out of nowhere in front of him.
He leaned out the window as she approached. “Excuse me, Miss, can I help you?”
Alisha nodded. “I’m sure you can.” She met his eyes and exerted some power. “My friend and I are going to need to borrow one of your trucks over there.”
The guard looked surprised. “One of my —”
“Yes,” Alisha said, using more power and feeling the connection bind him, “one of your trucks. Do you have keys handy?”
“Y-yes, I do have some here,” he said uncertainly.
Alisha waved Todd forward without breaking her gaze from the guard. “Thank you, can you show them to me, please?”
The guard, whose name was Ron Brantley, had keys to two jeeps and one troop transport truck, all parked near the booth.
Alisha had a difficult moment when Ron saw Todd jog up from the darkness, but she quickly regained control of him. Todd looked at the truck and pronounced it drivable. They climbed in and Alisha had Mr. Brantley drive them back to the mountain tunnel.
They arrived, and this time Mr. Brantley barely flinched on seeing the rest of their crew, although Alisha had to keep a firm grip on him when Brandon landed. Brandon loaded the back of the truck with the barrels of waste. He fit nearly all of them, then had the guards roll the remaining few back into the tunnel.
Brandon stepped over to Alisha while the guards were busy with the barrels. “Okay, have your boyfriend here drive until we’re clear of the site and Richland, then we can leave him somewhere and Todd can drive the rest of the way.”
Alisha rolled her eyes in disgust. “Fine,” she said. Boys were so immature.
“And you said he won’t remember anything after we let him go, right?”
Alisha nodded.
“Okay, let’s get moving. I’ll put an illusion on the truck to make it look empty, in case you get stopped. Alisha, you ride in the truck with Mr. Brantley, with Todd in the back. The rest will mount up on me, and I’ll fly above you so I can keep up the illusion.” Brandon looked around. “Any questions?”
Everyone got into position.
Todd rode in back with the waste under the illusion, and Alisha climbed in the passenger seat. Mr. Brantley got the truck moving, and they bounced down the dirt road until they reached the pavement and turned left, heading east.
Luckily, the facility wasn’t strictly a military one. Many of the security personnel at Hanford were civilians. Most of the work was contracted out to private companies. The guards at the last checkpoint knew Mr. Brantley and believed his story about the truck needing repairs, and he was taking it into town ahead of time so the shop could get started first thing when they opened.
They drove south for about an hour, then stopped in a deserted area, and everyone got out of the truck. Brandon landed nearby.
As Todd climbed out of the back, Alisha saw he had a multitude of open sores and burns on his arms and face. He walked by her and smiled — normally hideous, but made even more so by the wounds.
She cringed and asked, “What happened?”
Todd stopped and looked at her. “What?”
As she stared, she watched the sores slowly close and heal. Within a minute, they were covered over with new, apparently healthy skin. “Never mind,” Alisha said, amazed.
Todd shrugged and hopped in the driver’s seat.
The Gobinstratstorai guards, who looked even more human than they had the day before, bound and gagged Mr. Brantley and Alisha walked over to him. “Now, you’ll need to stay here and be quiet for a while,” she told him. He nodded calmly from behind his gag.
Alisha noticed some of the guards had sores and burn marks on their hands. Suddenly, she feared for her own safety and desperately hoped the metal of the truck cab had been enough to shield her from the effects of the waste.
She gave a shaky nod to Brandon and climbed onto his back. Everyone else got on, except for Todd, who started the truck again. It lurched a couple of times as he got the hang of the gears, but soon he was moving smoothly down the road once more.
Brandon made sure everyone was secure, then leapt into the air, following the truck with its deadly cargo.
40
Jenni and the others bobbed along, wondering what to do.
They had spent most of the night flowing with the river, with help from Bonnie, occasionally surfacing for Lori to refresh their air supply. They had come into more heavily populated areas a short time ago. Mr. Kain guessed they were getting close to Richland.
Dawn was coming soon and then they would be exposed.
“We have to assume they’ve gotten what they wanted by now and have gone back,” Mr. Kain said after a long silence.
“So, should we go back too?” Jenni asked. “See if we can stop them there?”
Mr. Kain sighed. “I don’t know. I suppose that’s our best option.”
“Wait a minute,” Mrs. Osorio said. “They just passed us! Overhead, southwest of here.”
“How can you tell?” Mr. Kain asked in surprise.
“I felt Zoe faintly. I don’t know if she, or Mrs. Minch felt me.”
Bonnie halted their progress and they sat motionless in the river.
“Why would they be going back south?” Jenni wondered aloud.
“Maybe they didn’t find what they wanted,” Crank offered.
“Hm, I find that difficult to believe,” Mr. Kain said. “If they couldn’t get the waste materials here, I can’t imagine a better place they could try, based on what Mrs. Osorio found.”
They sat quietly for a couple of minutes, thinking.
Mr. Kain came to a decision. “Let’s get out of the river at least and take stock of what we have.”
Bonnie moved their bubble to the southern edge and they surfaced. Jenni didn’t see anyone around as she flew to the bank, still in her Faerstrastenai form. Lights from the city sparkled to the west, along with lights from houses and farms that dotted the landscape all around them. She could see a farm house and barn a hundred yards away or so from where they exited the water. Everything was quiet.
Mr. Kain and Crank stepped onto the sandy bank, then Crank bent over with the bottle and Bonnie sloshed herself inside. Jenni noticed Crank’s pants looked like capris, and his shirt was nearly bursting at the seams. She thought he may have grown as much as nine or ten inches already.
Mr. Kain didn’t appear any different, however, and the others hadn’t shown any signs they were returning to human form. It didn’t make sense.
They stretched for a minute, working out kinks from having sat for so long on the stone.
“What if they couldn’t go back to Mother?” Mrs. Osorio said suddenly from her pouch on t
he backpack.
“What do you mean?” Mr. Kain asked her.
“Well, Lori and I have been talking, and we don’t think we can create an opening to Mother from here. The lines are wrong.”
“Huh? ‘The lines are wrong,’ what the heck does that mean?” Mr. Kain asked, exasperated.
Mrs. Osorio sighed. “Sorry, it’s difficult to explain … things look and feel so different to me now. Basically, there are lines of power, or magic if you will, that run through the world. As elemental spirits, we can see and interact with them to some degree. Mother, however, has many, many more of these lines than Earth. So, there, it was easy for us to kind of, well, match them up, I guess you could say, to create an opening between the worlds. Here though, the lines aren’t close enough together to do that.”
Mr. Kain was puzzled. “So where can we —”
“The lake!” Jenni yelped, flying in a loop in front of Mr. Kain’s face. “They’re going back to the lake. The lines must be close enough there — it worked for us before.”
“Of course!” Mrs. Osorio exclaimed. “Very good, Jenni! That must be where they’re going.”
Mr. Kain nodded. “Okay, I can see that … but how can we get there? We can’t chance taking a car again, the police will be looking for that.”
Jenni sighed and sat down on Crank’s shoulder. The stars were fading and dawn was fast approaching. They needed to move somewhere.
She decided to change back to human form so Mr. Kain didn’t have to carry her backpack. She flew from Crank’s shoulder and began to grow. As she did, she noticed something she hadn’t before. Everything felt right.
When Ba’ize had been instructing her on how to change size, she hadn’t been able to take “stuff” from around her to make herself bigger. She couldn’t manipulate anything outside of her body. Here, though, on Earth, she felt a subtle connection with everything around her — like she could reach out and grab that rock, or the water, and change its substance in ways she never could on Mother.
She altered the image she had in her mind as she grew, from her normal self, to that of a dragon, like Brandon but not as big. She pulled some of the rocks and earth from the river bank into herself to create more mass — and it worked!