D. MacHale - The Never War

“Can of corn,” he said reassuringly. But his eyes gave him away. He was scared. Probably not as much as I was, though.

Gunny then threaded the slack rope through the railing and pulled my end tight. As I lowered myself down, he would play out my end of the rope, keeping pressure off the railing knot. It was like being double-secured. At least, that’s what I told myself.

I tested the strength of the cloth rope, nodded, and stepped down off the balcony. With my feet firmly planted on the wall, I began to walk down backward.

I flashed on the oldBatmanTV show where those guys used to walk up the sides of buildings with their Bat ropes. That was idiotic. But not as idiotic as what I was doing now. I held the cloth rope tightly, and slowly slid my hands down it as I moved. The only tricky part came when I got to one of Gunny’s knots. They were too big to slip through my clenched hands, so I had to let go with one hand at a time and cross over below it. That was scary.

I could hear the cloth rope straining under my weight. Obviously, this material wasn’t made to hold so much weight, because I kept hearing tiny little tearing sounds. They were faint, but they might as well have been exploding cherry bombs. If enough of those little tears got together, they’d make one big rip and, well, look out below.

Just to make me even more nervous, I looked up to see that Gunny didn’t have enough drape left to hold on to. I wasn’t double-secured anymore.

The whole trip only took a couple of minutes, though it felt like I was dangling from that building for a week. Finally I slid my right foot down another few inches and felt air. I had made it to the ceiling of the balcony below! I couldn’t see the balcony because it was cutinto the building, but I knew it was there. My foot told me so. I was almost home.

That’s when the bad news came.

No, the rope didn’t break. It wasn’t that bad. But it was close. I had another six feet to go before my feet would touch the railing of the balcony below, when I realized the worst: I had run out of rope. We made it too short! I dangled there, twenty-nine stories high over pavement, with the wind blowing and drops of rain beginning to fall…with nowhere to go.

“It’s too short!” I called up to Gunny. “I can’t go any lower.”

Gunny winced. “You sure?”

“Uh, yeah.” It didn’t take a genius to figure this one out.

“You’re going to have to climb back up,” Gunny called down.

This was a disaster. We blew it. How could we have made such a simple mistake? I had to climb back up and figure out a Plan B. But as soon as I reached my hand farther up the rope, I felt it tear again. It wasn’t a little tear either. I must have jolted down an inch. The rope was going to go! If I tried to climb back up, I wouldn’t make it very far. I was trapped. There was no place to go but down. Way down.

I then realized that I had one chance. It was horrifying to think of, but it was the only way. Without stopping to second guess, I grabbed higher up on the rope with one hand and pulled up to take some of my weight off the rope. I then began to untie the knot that secured the rope around my chest.

“Pendragon, what are you doing?” Gunny shouted in horror.

“I need more rope,” I called back. “This’llgive me another couple of feet.”

It was a totally scary maneuver. If I could untie the knot, I could use the extra length of rope that was wrapped around my chest to lower myself down a few more feet. Hopefully that would get me low enough to touch my feet to the railing and swing into the balcony.

Yeah, hopefully. It could also be suicide.

I had to pull myself up with one hand, and untie the knot with the other. To make things worse, if that’s possible, the knot was now squeezed into a tiny, tight ball because my whole weight had been pulling on it.

And it started to rain.

The fabric was getting wet and slick. This was insane.

So with one hand I pulled myself up; with the other hand I worked on the knot. It was really hard. After a few minutes my arm started to scream with pain from the stress. I wasn’t sure which was going to give out first, my arm or the rope. But I couldn’t rest. If I put my weight back on the rope, the knot would pull tight and I’d have to start over.

This was quickly looking like a very bad idea.

After a few agonizing minutes, I managed to loosen up the knot. The next step was the scary one. My right arm was shot. I had to reach up and grab the rope with my left arm to give it a rest. I couldn’t let my full weight back on the rope now. The knot was too loose. If I let go, the only thing that would break my fall was the pavement.

With a couple of quick tugs, I pulled the knot entirely free, then grabbed the rope with both hands. I was now hanging by my hands. My really tired hands. I then slipped down a few inches at a time, letting the slick rope slide through my hands. The pain was incredible. I was so tired.

I checked to see how much of the rope was left and saw about a foot until the end. This was going to be close. Then, with only a few inches of rope left, I felt the railing with my toe, I was there!

But I wasn’t safe yet. My arms were straight up over my head and I was still staring at building. I was so freakin’ close, but still not low enough to swing in. I was going to have to put my full weight on the rail, let go of the rope, and duck under the ceiling. Sounds easy, right? It wasn’t. It was totally awkward. Making it worse, the narrow rail was slick with rain.

I eased myself down until my feet were resting on the rail. Man, it felt great to be on something solid again. There wasn’t much more than an inch of rope left, but that was okay. For the first time, I thought I was going to make it. I gingerly let go of the rope, putting all my weight on my feet. I then started to crouch down to duck under the ceiling and jump onto the balcony when…

My feet slipped.

It all went so fast that I’m not exactly sure what happened. Luckily, when my feet went off the rail, they slipped toward the balcony side, not toward air. That saved my life. But when I fell, I was so close to the rail that my head thumped against the hard, slick metal. Our escape plan had worked, but we weren’t any closer to getting out of there, because that head slam knocked me straight into dreamland.

I found myself lying on a beach. It was the Point in Stony Brook. Best beach in the world. At least it was the best beach in Stony Brook. Mark, how many times did we ride our bikes there to hang out for hours, watching the girls? I can still picture that pink bikini Courtney got last summer. Courtney, hot suit. Yeah, I was lying in the sand at the Point, listening to the waves, kicking back, hanging.

When I opened my eyes I expected to see you, Mark. Or Courtney, or any of the other kids from class, kicking it right along with me. Instead, I saw Dewey.

His eyes were as big as baseballs as he stared down at me.

“Pendragon!” he shouted, all nervous. “Are you alive?”

I wasn’t sure. But dead people didn’t get headaches, so I figured I was still among the living. I slowly sat up and looked around. All thoughts of the beach at Stony Brook and Courtney’s pink bikini were long gone. Oh, well. Dewey’s face pretty much ended that. Instead, I saw that I was lying on the floor of the ballroom on the twenty-ninth floor of the hotel. It was the same ballroom where we saved Max Rose’s life. It was empty now, except for Dewey and me.

“I was gonna call a doctor, but Gunny told me not to,” Dewey whined. “You want me to get one?”

“No,” I said quickly. I probably needed one, but now wasn’t the time. “I’m fine. Where’s Gunny?”

“Downstairs. He told me to wait with you till he got back. Did you really climb down that drapery?”