“Drones?”
“Drones,” Frost assured him.
“So we’re trapped on an island fifty miles from the mainland!” Hyde roared. “That what you’re tellin’ me?”
“Yeah,” Frost said. “Unless…”
“Unless what?”
Frost snapped his fingers. “The training harnesses!”
“The what?”
“The training harnesses,” Frost repeated. “The harnesses emit a signal that lets us track the Cryptos.”
Hyde tried following his reasoning. “I getcha. We terminate the signal, and the bomber returns to base.”
“Right!” Frost said.
“But to terminate the signal…”
“We have to terminate the Cryptos,” Frost said.
Cryptoville’s dome shuddered and groaned behind them, electrical discharge from the unfinished sections arcing out across the panels as its core systems failed one by one.
Hyde called the gangly MP over. “Evacuate the VIPs. Get them as far away from the crater as possible. Also, find out what kind of ordnance we have available, on the double. We’re gonna need to…”
Lightning flashed beyond the dome, followed by a thunderous drum roll. The rain began to fall and the lights inside Cryptoville went dim one bulb at a time.
“What’s going on?” Frost asked, making his way to one of the tactical stations.
The nervous Captain checked her screen. “The power’s gone out inside the dome.”
“Is it the storm?” Frost asked.
Captain Hula turned to face him, her face frozen in panic. “Negative. It’s a controlled shut-down from inside the grid.”
All of Mission Control fell eerily silent at once. Every pair of eyes within the crater turned toward the black dome with the same stark realization: if they wanted the Cryptos, they were going to have to go in and get them.
* * *
The kids slipped out of the shack one by one and got away from Mission Control as fast as they could. They ran until they hit the abandoned concession stands lining the midway almost a mile from the crater.
“Think we got away,” Newton panted. He popped his head up over the grimy counter for another look to make sure. “Yeah…got away.”
“What now?” Spider said.
The drizzling rain turned into a downpour, coming down cold and hard, and making the miserable conditions even worse. They weren’t dressed for the weather, and even less prepared for the Cryptos.
Even so, Drew knew what they had to do.
“We gotta go back,” he said. “You heard what Frost said. We gotta get to Harley before they do.”
“But how?” Grady asked. “Harley ain’t Harley anymore, bro. He’s Tusk. We ain’t strong enough to mess with him. Nobody’s strong enough!”
“We take a vote,” Newton said. “That way nobody feels guilty, and it’s gotta be unanimous. We all go, or none of us goes.”
“I say go,” Clementine said, raising her hand.
“Go,” Drew said, doing the same.
“Me, too—go,” Newton said.
Spider nodded. “Go.”
They turned to Grady, knowing that his vote would decide the matter, one way or the other. He tried to come up with a way out, but the weight of their stares was too much for him to bear.
“Alright, go,” Grady agreed.
They were all in.
* * *
The MPs herded the VIPs toward the concession stands, buying time until General Hyde could come up with a plan. The shell-shocked crowd obeyed their commands, clomping through the mud and mire in their formal wear, unaware that the island’s doomsday clock had already started ticking.
Frost moved against the flow of the crowd like a fish swimming upstream, but he had little choice. He had to get to the front gate before the Army locked down the entire park. The situation was out already of control, and he didn’t want to be around to explain what had gone wrong.
He’d made it to the perimeter and was almost out when a jeep skidded to a stop in front of him, blocking his escape.
The door flew open, and Miss Croy climbed out of the driver’s side wearing a black leather catsuit, her hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail.
“Going somewhere?” she asked
He was stunned to see her there since he’d never mentioned the island to her. “How did you get here?”
“I followed you,” she said.
“I…was…j-j-just—coming to get you,” Frost stuttered.
“Whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You weren’t trying to run out on our little partnership, were you?”
He took a step toward her. She pulled a pistol from her purse and aimed it at his heart.
His hands shot up. “Hey. We’re partners, remember?”
“Yeah, partners,” she growled. “But all that time we spent together—I thought we’d become more than that.”
He’d tried to keep his distance, to keep things professional, but she was so…so…never mind. He took a deep breath and composed himself. “We are, baby. We are.”
She waved the gun back and forth, cutting him off. “Don’t ‘baby’ me. I oughta kill you.”
She stroked the trigger with her index finger, and for a moment, he thought she was really going to shoot.
But then her expression softened, and she lowered the gun.
Frost finally exhaled. He closed the distance between them, putting his arm around her slender waist and pulling her close. “I don’t have time to explain this right now, but we gotta get outta here, Vanessa.”
“Get in,” she said, turning toward the jeep.
He grabbed her by the arm and whirled her around before she got to the jeep. “No. I got a better idea. Let’s take my ride.”
* * *
They crawled through a gash on the unfinished side of the dome and entered the puppet battlefield with a reverence reserved for hallowed ground.
“What’re we s’posed to be lookin’ for?” Spider asked.
Broken doll eyes followed them across the charred terrain wherever they stepped, watching them with an unearthly sentience that raised the hairs on the back of their necks.
“Dunno exactly,” Drew said.
Finding something they could use wouldn’t be easy. The Cryptos had decimated the toy soldiers, leaving their dismembered anatomy in piles scattered across the field.
Drew lifted one of the puppet heads for a closer look, surprised by how light the samurai helmet felt in his hands. He gave it a tap; the outer shell felt hard as steel, but the inner lining was foam rubber.
“Whatcha doin’?” Spider asked.
“Not sure yet,” Drew said. He put the helmet back down on the ground and stomped on it with both feet.
“Wow. Looks good as new,” Clementine said.
Drew tossed the helmet to Newton for inspection.
“Wonder what it’s made of?” Newton mused. “Thin and light. Feels like plastic, but it’s gotta be metal.”
Grady grabbed one of the crude wooden swords from the pile of inanimate arms and legs, swinging the blade over his head in a graceful figure eight. Like the rest of the weapons, it was a prop used for show and not meant to cut anyone or anything, but it was solid and felt heavy in his hands.
Spider pulled a broken spear from the back of one of the puppets and hoisted it over his head. “I’m better with nunchucks,” he said, swinging playfully at Grady and missing.
Grady parried, and then thrusted. Spider stepped and countered.
“Sure ya don’t mean dumb-chucks,” Grady teased.
“Not bad,” Spider said, “yer almost good enough to chop vegetables at a Japanese steakhouse.”
Watching them go back and forth a few rounds gave Drew an idea.
“Start takin’ these puppets apart,” he said.
* * *
Captain Runyon led what was left of his unit through the interior in force. The native foliage threatened to reclaim this
wing of the maze completely, busting through the fissured pavement like mutant tentacles and slowing their progress.
The Private on point signaled, and the soldiers behind him stopped. The rain leaking through the cracks in the dome had condensed into an eerie fog. He could see figures moving around the Ferris wheel, but not much more.
The Private tapped his headset and whispered into the transmitter. “Red Two to Red Six. We got movement here. Can’t tell how many. Over.”
Runyon signaled, and the rest of the men moved into position behind the Private. “Red One this is Red Six,” he said. “We have the Cryptos sighted. Over.”
“Roger, Red Six, acknowledged,” General Hyde answered, his voice garbled by static. “Move into position and engage. Repeat, move into position and engage. Over.”
“Roger that, Red One. Move in and engage. Over and out,” Runyon repeated.
CHAPTER 12
The storm outside had ripped through the dome’s unfinished sections, exposing Cryptoville’s interior to the freezing rain. But the weather didn’t bother the Cryptos. They climbed the wooden coaster’s scaffolding with ease, even with the added weight of their hostage.
Molly aimed the camera at herself, wiping the condensation from the lens. She composed herself as best as she could, but they’d caught her before she could change out of her swimsuit and the cold made her shiver uncontrollably.
“An unknown terrorist group tentatively identified as the Crypto Liberation Army—by me, Molly Tuggle—has taken hostages and is holding them inside this abandoned theme park.”
She zoomed in on the other hostages, adjusting the lens until they were in focus.
“As you can see, they’ve got the prisoners hanging upside down at regular intervals, dangling from the coaster’s frame like Christmas ornaments. Why? I don’t know. Maybe as some kind of political statement.”
Tusk growled, and Molly retreated, scuttling to the center of the maintenance deck where she’d be easier to watch.
She turned the camera and panned across the scene. “The coaster’s rails loop around these giant globes painted like the planets of the solar system. The globes seem to be hollow, with tunnels through their center to let the cars to pass through--or to let the terrorists hide inside, I suppose.”
She focused on the Cryptos, zooming in on each. “The terrorists have deployed themselves across the length of the coaster, each facing a different direction, so sneaking up on them seems almost impossible.”
She aimed the camera back at herself. “I don’t know what happened to my cameraman, Ivan Cameraman. Everything happened so fast. What the CLA wants, we can only guess at since no demands have been made. But we—I—will be continually broadcasting during the crisis.”
* * *
The pounding on the trailer’s hatch was getting monotonous, but for the moment, it was nothing more than a distraction. Principal Hoyt wasn’t sure how long it would take the soldiers outside to get through, but he was sure they wouldn’t stop until they did.
He’d figured out how to work most of the control board through trial and error. He was surprised to find that not only did he have command over the park’s power supply, but he also had a bird's-eye view of every section inside Cryptoville, thanks to the security cameras mounted within the dome.
But what he saw worried him. The kids were headed in the wrong direction, away from the Cryptos, not toward them.
“There’s gotta be a way to way to tip the odds in their favor,” Hoyt grumbled. “Where is that control slider? I know I saw it—here it is.” He moved it back and forth a few times to get a feel for how it worked, and the dome’s stars faded on and off a few times in response.
“Now to really get their attention,” he said, and repeated the sequence again, faster this time.
He watched the monitor, waiting for them to catch on. But he could tell by their body language that they weren’t getting it. “This ain’t workin’. Gotta be a way to set this to automatic.”
Changing the frequency made the strobing lights appear to race across the horizon and disappear into the distance, blurring together until they merged and formed a single star that glowed against the dome like a beacon.
“Come on, kids,” he said. “Follow your shooting star...”
* * *
The unexpected appearance of the star on the horizon scattered the band of raggedy knights, forcing them to take cover within the maze’s nooks and crannies.
“Stay down!” Drew shouted, but it was too late. They’d been clanking through Cryptoville in their mismatched puppet armor long enough and loud enough to give their position away to Crypto and soldier alike.
“What is it?” Newton asked. “What’s it doin’?”
They stuck their heads up every few seconds to see what the star was doing, but it wasn’t doing anything. Rather, it hung above their heads, fading in and out, almost like it was…waiting.
“Whatcha think?” Clementine asked.
“Dunno,” Spider said. “But…”
“But what?” Clementine wanted to know.
“Ya get the feeling like it’s—dunno—like playin’ to a rhythm’? Like it’s playin’ along to a song?” Spider asked.
Clementine counted the star’s beats and started humming.
“What is it?” Grady asked. “Ya recognize it?”
“La, la, la…Always follow your shooting star…” she hummed.
They looked at each other and had the same thought: Old Man Hoyt!
“He must be tryin’ to tell us which way to go!” Clementine said. “Pointing us in the right direction!”
“What do we do?” Newton asked.
“Follow the shooting star,” Drew said.
They crawled out of their hiding places and made their way through the maze—step, step, jump, step, climb, step—and on they went for what seemed like miles, until they could follow the star no further.
“What now?” Clementine wondered.
They’d run into a dead end, and all they could do was watch the star disappear beyond the imposing maze wall before them.
Backtracking meant losing valuable time, and even then they couldn’t be sure that they’d find their way back to where they’d started.
“Gimme a hand,” Drew said.
The others formed a pyramid, and he climbed onto their shoulders, pulling himself up on top of the maze wall.
“Well?” Clementine asked. “Whatcha see?”
Drew reached out his hand to help her up. “We’re here.”
The star hung above the coaster at its pinnacle, its halo so bright they had to cover their eyes. Squinting through their outstretched fingers, they could see the Cryptos’ unmistakable profiles silhouetted against the light’s radiance, high atop the coaster’s maintenance deck.
“We gotta get closer,” Spider said.
Standing on top of the maze wall left them exposed, so they climbed down the other side and trudged through the boggy muck surrounding the coaster, trying to get a better idea of what they were up against.
Drew ducked behind the coaster’s concrete support pylons and counted the hostages. “Eleven of ’em. They look like soldiers.”
Clementine wiped the moisture from the binoculars and looked for herself. “Maybe we can cut ’em down. We could sure use the help.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
They spun on their heels, eyes darting in every direction.
“Up here.”
The battered soldier hung upside down from the coaster scaffolding a few feet above them, caught like a fly in a spider’s web.
“Who are you?” Spider whispered.
“Runyon—Special Cryptozoological Unit,” he grunted between labored breaths. “Those chains are connected. Cut one of us loose and the Cryptos will come down on you.”
Drew traced the chains up the scaffolding to the upper deck. Runyon was right; the hostages were wired to each other in sequence, bait in a trap to lure them forward.
“What happened?” Grady asked.
“We thought we were hunting them,” Runyon said, “but they were hunting us. Playing hit and run—luring us deeper and deeper into the interior and picking us off one by one.”
Drew always wondered just how smart the Cryptos really were, because they only seemed to react out of instinct. But if what Runyon said was true, they were capable of basic reasoning—and maybe much more.
“Now I have a question,” Runyon said. “Who are you?”
Newton made a sweeping gesture toward the maze. “We’re the ones who came up with all this.”
Runyon forced an exhausted smile. “Kids designed all this? Now that I’ve gone through it, that actually makes sense. My compliments on your little labyrinth of death. But those props won’t do much good against the Cryptos.”
Drew ran his fingers across his wooden sword’s dull edge. “You got a better idea?”
“Grab that pack over there,” Runyon said. “No--to the left. Yeah, that’s it.”
Spider wrestled the pack free from the thorny underbrush and opened the flap. “Darts? What good are darts gonna do?”
“Those darts are diamond tipped,” Runyon said. “Sharp enough to penetrate even Cryptos hide.”
Drew looked for himself. “What’s this green stuff in ’em?”
“It’s a neurotoxin,” Runyon said.
“You mean poison,” Newton muttered in disgust. “You want us to kill them.”
Runyon started squirming, but the more he struggled, the deeper the chains cut into his flesh. “We gotta get to those harnesses, one way or another. That bomber is on its way and we’re runnin’ outta time.”
“I know Harley,” Drew argued. “We just gotta get close enough to—”
“You might know Harley, but I know Tusk,” Runyon snapped. “I trained him. He won’t go down without a fight.”
The others looked at Drew and waited for him to say something—to say anything to alleviate them of their awful responsibility.
Drew turned the dart over in his hand, watching the green fluid shift back and forth inside the cartridge, knowing the others would do what he asked them to do—whatever he asked them to do.
He unscrewed the tip and poured the poison out, throwing the dart aside. “We been jammed up worse than this before. And we don’t need poison darts to take Harley and ’em out. We got the gear from the puppets. We gonna turn this into a street fight. We’ll turn off the harnesses and then get Harley and ‘em to the doctor.”
Relieved smiles broke out across their faces. The odds were still stacked high against them, but like Drew reminded them, they’d been in tough scrapes before.