Disney in Shadow (14 page)

“A
RE YOU KIDDING ME?
” Everything had gone smoothly for Finn. He’d made it into the Studios, had retrieved the fob, and had been about to board the last bus back to the Transportation Ticket Center, when he realized he’d be stranded there. He’d gone invisible shortly after leaving the Studios’ gate and had been standing near the bus loading area wondering what to do when he’d overheard a conversation behind him.

“Catch a ride back to Epcot with you?” Printed in large yellow letters across a windbreaker Finn read:
ORDNANCE CREW CHIEF
.

“Sure, climb in! Don’t know what we’d have done without you, Pete,” the driver of the pickup said. Pete climbed in. A Mickey Mouse bobblehead nodded at the two men from the dashboard. “Would have been a disaster without those pyro effects.”

“Without problems,” said Pete, “I wouldn’t have a job. Happy to help out. I just wish we weren’t doing the run-through of Fantasmic! at five again tomorrow.”

“Every morning this week.”

“Don’t remind me. I can hear my alarm ringing already.”

As Pete pulled himself up into the cab, the invisible Finn stepped onto the bumper and pulled himself into the truck bed.

The problem came as the pickup truck was passing through Security backstage at Epcot, for, as it turned out, the Epcot DHI projectors could reach all the way out to the checkpoint. Finn’s DHI began flashing and flickering on and off in the truck bed, only seconds before the pickup pulled to a stop at the Security blockade. There was no tarp to hide under. No empty cardboard box. So he rolled to the side of the truck bed nearest the guard station and hid as best he could. Hiding his projected image was one thing—his effort accomplished that. But there was nothing to stop his pulsing glow from illuminating the back of the truck. He feared either the guard, or Pete, from the passenger seat, would pick up on his blinking glow and discover him. He was like a neon sign going on and off. He tried to think of how to talk his way out of this if spotted, but couldn’t come up with any decent excuses.

The driver announced himself and must have passed the guard some identification for him and his passenger. Would the guard check the back of the truck?

He didn’t. The truck pulled forward. Thirty yards past the checkpoint Finn’s DHI stopped flickering. He was fully projected now, and he had to get out of the moving truck before being spotted. He calmed himself, repeating the procedure he’d outlined for Philby, not forcing, but
allowing
his DHI to realize all-clear. Then he rolled over the side of the moving pickup truck and dropped. If he’d been human, he would have broken bones and suffered a road rash that would have stayed with him through Christmas. Instead, he fell to the pavement and bounced. No matter how prepared he’d been, he couldn’t keep fear entirely out of his system. He felt the contact with the asphalt; his elbows and knees hurt as he rolled and sat up, now on the edge of the access road. His palms were scraped, though not badly, and it occurred to him he’d have these wounds when he awakened later that morning, that he’d need an excuse for them to use on his mom. But he was in surprisingly good shape for a kid who had just jumped from a moving vehicle.

He stood up, took his bearings by locating Epcot’s famous golf ball, and headed off to join the others.

His surprise, upon arriving at the rendezvous, was Philby.

He was standing there, wearing only his underpants.

“No, I’m not kidding you,” Philby said. “It was a situation beyond my control.”

“As in?” asked Charlene, who couldn’t keep the smirk off her face.

“As in, I happened to fall asleep before I expected. I was getting dressed—putting some dark clothes on—when I heard my mom coming to check on me. She’d probably heard my dresser drawers or something—”

“Your drawers?” Maybeck said, winning a volley of laughter.

“And I had to get into bed fast, and next thing I know I’m waking up here.”

“Here,” said Jess, who’d worn a sweater. Philby thanked her as he tied it around his waist.

“I can all-clear into one of the gift shops and borrow you a pair of pants. We just have to put them back before we leave.”

That’s exactly what he did on their way to the Wonders of Life pavilion. Finn walked through the front door of the Future World gift shop, found some clothes for Philby, and shoved them through a mail slot. Philby ended up in sweatpants and a Test Track T-shirt.

“Okay, that’s the entrance,” Willa said as they approached a line of potted evergreen trees. The trees had been cleverly placed to both block the entry ramp and screen the closed pavilion from view.

“Over here,” Finn said, moving them into the planting to hide. He lowered his voice. “We’d better split up.” He’d long since accepted that the other Keepers looked to him to have a plan. “That way if there’s trouble, maybe one group can help the other. Or, at the very least, not all of us get caught at the same time.”

“That doesn’t sound great,” Charlene said, the climbing rope carried over her left shoulder.

“Do you feel like climbing?” Finn asked.

She peered out at the round pavilion. “I should be able to get up those
X
s to that lip in the middle of the glass. It looks like I can get clear around the building.”

“There’s a sunroom terrace, over there,” Philby said, pointing. “If you could lower the rope—”

“Yeah!” said Maybeck.

“You’ll need to tie off both ends,” Charlene told Maybeck. “I’ll double it, like we do for climbing, so we can pull it down from the bottom after we leave.”

“No sweat.”

“Philby, Willa, and Maybeck will climb and meet you on the balcony,” Finn said. “Philby, you or Maybeck could all-clear and go through the door and get it open.

“Amanda, Jess, and I will hang near the front doors. Once you guys are in, if there’s no one watching the front door, one of you will come let us in. You guys will take the second floor, we’ll take the ground level.”

Charlene held up her mobile phone. She wore a black baseball cap to help hide her blond hair. “I’ll call if I spot trouble.”

“Might be too risky,” Finn said. “Too noisy. Let’s stick with the flashlights. Three flashes is
clear
. One means we hang here and wait for you to come back.”

“Okay,” Charlene said, the strength in her voice belying her pretense of bravery. “But you’ll need a view of the sunroom.”

“I’m with you,” Maybeck said. “I can give you a leg up, then I’ll get around to the side and wait for your signal. I’ll pass it on.”

“That works,” Finn said.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Jess asked Charlene somewhat timidly.

“She’s fine,” Maybeck said, resenting Jess’s voicing her concern.

“Help me tie this on,” Charlene said.

Amanda and Jess knotted the coil of rope into a figure eight that fit snugly on Charlene’s shoulder. She double-checked the flashlight, cupping it to avoid giving their position away.

“One last thing,” Finn said. “If it goes bad in there, we rendezvous in two stages. First, here, if it seems safe. Then, where we crossed over, over near Test Track. If some of us miss the first crossover, I’ll leave the fob on the water fountain by the bathrooms. We’ll need a better hiding place for it after the final crossover, so keep that in mind.”

“We’re good,” an impatient Maybeck said. “Let’s do this thing.”

He and Charlene slipped out of the bushes and, ducking low, ran quickly toward the looming pavilion.

F
INN KEPT AMANDA
and Jess close, crouched and sneaking through the trees and shrubs, with Philby and Willa lagging slightly behind. The group gathered where they’d have a view of Maybeck, who had scurried off into the overgrowth after boosting Charlene up into the superstructure. Maybeck had taken a position where he could see around to the back of the pavilion.

The five watched in amazement as Charlene scrambled up the crossbeams like a monkey. She threw a knee over the rim that stuck off the curved surface like a shelf, and then rose to her feet, leaning against the wall and inching her way to her left. After a few minutes, she disappeared around the curve of the building.

“We wait for Maybeck’s signal.”

“Finn!” hissed Jess. She was pointing toward the pavilion. “On the ground.”

“I don’t know what you’re pointing at.”

Amanda shuddered. “Is that a—”

“Snake?” gasped Willa.

“Not just a snake,” Philby answered. “A python. A giant python.”

“That’s Gigabyte,” Finn said, finally seeing the thing. “It’s from Honey, I Shrunk the Audience.”

The python was over fifteen feet long and a foot in diameter, with a diamond-shaped, oversized head the size of a large pumpkin. He was patrolling through the grass and the landscaping along the base of the pavilion. “What’s he doing here?” Willa whispered. “We aren’t anywhere near Honey, I Shrunk the Audience.”

“He’s with
them
,” Finn answered.

“And if he’s guarding Wonders,” Philby said, “then it’s pretty obvious who’s inside.”

“Seriously?” Willa sounded terrified.

“An Overtaker for sure,” said Philby. “Interesting that the characters come alive here the same as in MK and AK. If we thought it was limited to just—”

“Spare us the Nutty Professor routine,” Willa said, uncharacteristically harshly. “If the Overtakers are inside, then Charlene’s in trouble, big-time.”

“We should have set up a system to do this in reverse,” Finn said, withdrawing his flashlight and preparing to signal Maybeck.

Philby slapped his hand over the front of Finn’s light, stopping him.

“Wait a second!” he hissed. “Think this through. If you signal Maybeck, and he signals back, guess who’ll see it?” He stared off into the general direction of where they’d last seen Gigabyte.

“Note to self,” Willa said. “Where’s the snake now?”

“I was watching him,” Jess said. “But I lost him by that column.”

“What if he’s headed here?” Willa said, speaking what they were all thinking. “Don’t snakes have amazing noses?”

“They do have an olfactory ability,” Philby said. “They don’t have noses. But yes, they can smell things a long, long ways away.”

“Like nervous girls?” Willa said.

“We have to warn Charlene,” Finn said.

“Not with the flashlight,” Philby cautioned. “That’ll backfire.”

Willa quickly tried to reach Charlene by phone. She shook her head. “Must have turned it off when we nixed it.”

Finn felt responsible for that decision. He toed a rock free of the dirt at their feet and picked it up. “What if we could distract the snake? Turn him around so he doesn’t see our flashlights?”

“I think it may be too late for that,” Amanda said. She was looking off toward Maybeck, and when Finn looked in that direction he saw what she had seen: a small white light flashing three times, pausing, and flashing the same signal again. Maybeck was relaying Charlene’s signal.

“She thinks everything’s okay,” Finn gasped.

“And maybe it is,” Philby said. “Maybe it isn’t the Overtakers inside, but Wayne. Maybe the snake is on his own, patrolling Wonders
for
the Overtakers, sure, but not
with
them.”

“That would be a lucky break,” Finn said.

“Only one way to test it,” Philby pointed out.

Finn nodded. He extended the flashlight through the wall of leaves and pushed its button once, signaling:
danger
.

T
HE AREA OF THE BUSHES
where they’d seen Maybeck’s flashlight remained dark. But from the grass there appeared a silver gray flash of a different sort: snakeskin. As Philby had predicted, Gigabyte had seen the signal and had taken off in Maybeck’s direction to determine its source.

“This is our shot,” Finn said. “Maybeck just bought us the front door. We can’t wait for Charlene.”

“Are you
nuts
?” Willa said.

“We go now!” Finn said. He reached out, took Amanda by the hand, and led her out of the shrubbery, somehow knowing that the others would follow—that Jess would stay with Amanda, and Philby would join him; Willa wasn’t going to remain in the bushes alone.

Their DHIs sprinted across the lawn, jumped a rail, and hurried up the ramp leading to the pavilion’s front door. All of them were panting, and Philby bent over to catch his breath.

“Give me two seconds,” Finn said, closing his eyes and attempting to settle himself into all-clear. But it required a profound depth of concentration, mixed with a surrender and the subsequent removal of any fear. Standing in the dark, in front of an enormous abandoned pavilion with a fifteen-foot python somewhere out there, he found it difficult to picture the pinprick of light in the sea of darkness inside his eyelids.

“How do we know it isn’t coming this way?” Willa asked.

“Shh!”
Philby understood the challenges of all-clear.

“How do we know there isn’t something, someone, much worse inside?”

Amanda tapped Willa on the shoulder and pointed to Jess who, standing alongside Finn, had her eyes squeezed shut.

“I know that look: she’s picking up on something,” Amanda whispered so softly that not even Philby could hear her.

In the gloomy darkness, Jess’s right hand reached for her back pocket and pulled out a small spiral notebook, her eyes still pinched shut. Her left hand found a mechanical pencil in her front pocket and, as she slowly came out of her trance, began to sketch.

Finn passed through the glass of the pavilion’s front door and turned to face them. He could be seen taking a deep breath. He tried to push the door’s panic bar, to open it, but his hand slid right through the glass barrier, and he pulled it back inside. He shook his arms.

“It’s coming back,” Willa announced, pulling Philby and the others down to a crouch.

Philby peered out to see the silver python slithering toward them at a high speed. “Stay down,” he said.

Finn tried a second time, and his glowing arms went right out the door. The third time was the trick: the door opened.

The others slipped inside and Philby quietly pulled the door closed. Willa backed her way through the door, never taking her eyes off Gigabyte.

“Look!” she said pointing. “Where’s he going?”

The python reached the path and headed off, his body maintaining a giant
S
-shape yet still propelling himself forward, moving toward the center of the park
away
from the pavilion.

“Reinforcements. If we could follow him—”

“He might lead us to the Overtakers,” Philby concluded for Finn.

“And maybe Wayne.”

“You can’t be serious!” Willa complained.

“It’s too late,” Philby said. “He’s too fast. The only way we’d be able to follow him is at an all-out run, and he’d spot us.”

Jess gasped and they all looked at her and her pencil that had stopped in the midst of making the sketch.

“What is it?” Amanda asked.

“It’s me…” Jess answered. “They’re coming for me.”

For a moment Finn couldn’t think. His mind, free of all thought only seconds before, was bombarded with reality—the hardest part of going all-clear. It was like being jostled awake from the deepest sleep ever. Like waking up in the middle of a class only to realize the teacher has just called your name. He shook his head. His hands were doing the tingling thing, and his feet felt as if he were walking on a bed of a thousand needles.

“Where?” he managed to say.

“The image stopped,” Jess said, shrugging her shoulders. “The minute I realized it was me, the image stopped.”

“We’ve got to get her back,” Willa said. “Cross her back over.”

“We need her,” Finn said, without thinking. He looked at her, knowing the kind of pressure they were putting onto her, but not seeing any choice. They had come a long way to reach this moment. “It’s up to you.” They were where they were because of Jess’s original dream, because of her powers as a seer. He believed they needed her to search the pavilion, to confirm that they had the right place. “No one will hold it against you if you go. It’s probably the smart thing to do.”

“They will come from my left side. Two of them. A man with a red beard and a green tunic, and a boy much like him wearing blue. I know that sounds ridiculous, but…”

“Trust me,” Finn said. “Everything we do is ridiculous. No one would believe half of what we’ve seen.”

“Vikings,” Philby whispered. “Norway. There’s a father-and-son display. It’s just about as she has described.”

“What about…cavemen?” Jess asked. “I know that also sounds stupid but—”

“Nothing is stupid,” Finn said. “You know that! Not here. Philby? Cavemen?”

“Spaceship Earth. Another father-and-son team. In the scene, the two are looking at pictographs on cave walls. The guests see them from behind, never see their faces.”

“They’re part of this too,” Jess declared.

“Overtakers,” Willa and Finn said in unison.

“How do we protect her?” Amanda said anxiously.

“We know what to expect now,” Finn said. “Or
who
to expect.”

“Keep them away from me, and I’m safe,” Jess said.

“We don’t know that what she just saw will happen tonight,” Professor Philby pointed out, raising his index finger perfunctorily. “The future is longer than just the next few minutes.”

“But what she saw
could
also happen tonight,” a troubled Amanda said.

“If we stopped talking and started looking for Wayne,” Finn said, “tonight would be over a lot sooner.”

Maybeck appeared at the top of the stairs and stopped abruptly. “I thought…” he whispered, seeing them already inside.

“Change of plans,” Finn hissed back.

Maybeck made a series of hand signals that apparently Finn was supposed to understand. He didn’t.

“He and Charlene will stay upstairs,” Philby translated. “No sign of the Overtakers. Should we split up Jess and Amanda?”

“You got all that,” Finn asked, bewildered, “from him pumping his fists a couple times?”

“No. That last part was me. What about Jess upstairs, Amanda with us? If anyone comes after Jess, maybe we can act as decoys, buying Charlene time to get Jess out of here.”

“Works for me,” Finn said. “Jess?”

“Sure. Why not?” She gave a fleeting glance in the direction of Amanda and hurried up the stairs. Finn, Willa, Philby, and Amanda crept forward and moved past groupings of gray machines with bold white numbers on their fronts. Philby explained, a little heavy-handedly, that Wonders had been known for its interactive stations long before
interactive
was even a word. There were all sorts of games and demonstrations surrounding them that involved participation, but their plugs were pulled and they were stacked randomly together—it looked more like a technology graveyard than a Disney attraction.

A doorway opened into a vast space beneath a dome.

“This reminds me of The Land,” Willa said. “Only different.”

A gray glow from the path lighting outside leaked through the skylights, playing on the contents like moonlight. At the center of the circular space was a theater; there were structures made to look like tents, and seats and tables; the whole pavilion was deserted in a way that suggested that the guests had fled in a hurry.

“Creepy,” Willa said.

“Times ten,” Amanda said.

There was a sign for
BODY WARS
on the opposite wall in front of a queue with stanchions and chain.

“It was originally all about stuff to do with health,” Philby said. “Body Wars, Cranium Command, The Making of Me. Some of it was really gross.”

“A lot of places to hide a person,” Finn said.

“And totally empty,” Philby said. “It’s pretty weird to see an entire pavilion totally empty.”

“You think?” Willa snapped sarcastically.

A whistle caught their attention. Finn looked behind them to the second floor—an enclosed sunroom that ran fully around the building. Maybeck was waving for them to come up.

Philby gestured in hand signals. Maybeck gestured back.

“Did I miss a class or something?” Finn asked.

“He wants us all up there,” Philby said. “There’s something to see.”

“That’s not so smart,” Finn said immediately. “We’re more effective in two groups. As a single group we’re vulnerable.”

Philby nodded. He flashed Maybeck some hand signals, and Maybeck turned from the railing and disappeared.

“Okay, Maybeck’s coming down,” Philby said. “You and Amanda will go up to Charlene and Jess.”

Finn remained skeptical that Philby could have gotten that from Maybeck’s few quick gestures, but a moment later Maybeck appeared.

“You’re not going to believe it,” Maybeck said.

“Keep an eye out,” Finn said. “All phones on vibrate. Call me if there’s trouble.” He and Amanda took off.

Finn and Amanda hurried back to the main doors and were halfway up the stairs when Finn tripped. He fell flat into the stone stairs and struggled to stand back up, desperate not to look too much like an uncoordinated dork. But Amanda crawled up his back and lay down on top of him, holding him down, squeezing the breath out of him, before sliding off to his side, her left arm still around him. “Outside!” she whispered.

The exterior wall was glass. Finn edged his eye over the edge of the staircase and spotted what Amanda had seen: the giant gray python, squirming toward the pavilion, with four shapes following close behind. Two adults, two children, judging by their size.

“Vikings and cave…people,” Finn said. He rolled over and quickly texted all the others.

MAYDAY!

Finn was lying face-to-face with Amanda, so close that he could smell a flowery sweetness. Her hand had seemed to burn his back where she’d touched him.

Philby, Maybeck, and Willa appeared, moving toward the front door.

“Pssst!”
Finn caught Philby’s attention and tried his best to hand-signal him to crouch and hurry to join them. He then took Amanda’s hand and, bending low, the two raced for the top of the stairs.

They ran down a hall and into a room where a real-life fabric circus tent had been erected inside the reception area. Beyond the circus tent, Charlene was waving them ahead.

As Finn reached Charlene and Jess, the other three were fast on his heels. Finn stepped into what turned out to be a conference room with a long oval table surrounded by a dozen or more comfortable chairs. But it wasn’t the chairs or the table that caught his eye. It was the walls. They’d been painted with carousel horses from
Mary Poppins
, so he felt as if he were at the very center of a carousel, looking out.

“Oh my gosh,” he said. “This is it.”

He immediately identified the panel and chair that Jess had sketched in her diary. The resemblance was uncanny. She’d captured it perfectly.

“But no code on the wall,” Jess pointed out. “Or if it’s there, we can’t see it.”

“Maybe it’s invisible ink or it needs a special light or something in order to be seen,” Philby said.

“And no Wayne,” Charlene said.

“We’re out-a here, people,” Maybeck said as he arrived. “Those four aren’t sightseeing.”

Finn said, “We’ll go down Charlene’s rope, as soon as we’re certain those four are inside.”

“What four?” Charlene asked.

“We’ll explain later,” Finn said.

“We have visitors,” said Amanda. “Two sets of fathers and sons.”

“And don’t forget the snake,” said Willa.

“I’ll stand watch,” Maybeck offered. “The moment they enter the building, we go over the side.”

“What about the snake?” Willa asked in a dry rasp.

“I can deal with the snake,” Finn said. If he could maintain himself fully crossed over in all-clear, the snake would have nothing to attack.

If
, he thought.

“Follow me!” Charlene said, leading them through a jumbled room where there were cloud figures on the wall.

Jess stopped as if she’d hit a wall of glass.

Finn grabbed her.

She said, “I know this place. I’ve seen those shapes.” She pointed to a hot-air balloon and a spaceship—small plaster reliefs hanging on the wall about fifteen feet above the floor.

“We’ve got to go,” Finn said, pulling her after him. They entered a spacious patio enclosed in walls of glass that met overhead like a greenhouse. One of the windows was open and Finn spotted Charlene’s rope looped over a pipe and doubled, dropping down to the ground.

“Philby first. Then Jess, then Amanda.”

No one argued with him. When Maybeck appeared, frantic and excited, Philby hooked the rope in his feet and lowered himself. Jess went next. They went quickly, in an orderly fashion, and Finn thought back to Wayne telling him that some people were born to lead and that he was one of those people. He hadn’t believed it at the time, but he was slowly coming around.

“I’m last,” Charlene told him, when only the two of them remained. “I’ll take the rope out so they won’t even know we were here.”

“How can you do that?” Finn asked.

“Same as in climbing. I’ll loop the rope over a bar up top. We’ll climb on a double rope and then pulling it out is a matter of just tugging one end of it.”

“But no funny business,” Finn said.

“None,” she said.

A moment later they were all in the shrubs at the base of the pavilion. Willa helped Charlene coil the rope.

Then, from their left, a thick shape emerged, worming across the grass—
Gigabyte
. Finn tried his own sign language. He held up six fingers and then motioned toward the thick vegetation twenty yards across the open grass. Philby nodded to signal that he had understood. Maybeck pointed back at Finn and shrugged as if to say,
What about you?