James Patterson - Two Schools Out - Forever

"Sorry, kids," the attendant said. "You have to exit out that way only."

"No, no," I said urgently. "We left our digital camera in the log! Mom will kill us! We just need to run back and check..."

The attendant paused for a moment, and in that moment I forced us all past him. "Excuse us, excuse us, coming through!"

Then we were back inside the ride. A walkway, almost concealed by false boulders, ran along one wall. We zipped down it, hearing the attendant calling after us.

"Here!" Fang said, stopping suddenly. I'd almost passed the door completely-it was practically invisible. Quickly we shot through it and found ourselves in a long, dimly lit corridor. Child's play. In seconds we had raced to the end of it and out its exit. We found ourselves behind some large shrubs.

"Come on," I said grimly. "Over to that fake mountain and then an up-and-away."

Three minutes later we were airborne, fading into the setting sun, leaving Disney World far behind. Nudge had tears running down her cheeks, and Gazzy and Angel both looked bitterly disappointed.

"I-," the Gasman began.

"What?" I angled one wing slightly and pulled closer to him.

"I wish we could have gone into the Haunted Mansion," he said. "It's supposed to be awesome."

I sighed. "I know, guys." Everyone was flying steadily, but each face was a mask of disappointment and frustration. "There were a bunch of things I'd been hoping to do too." All involving seeing mouse ears in my rearview mirror. If I had one. "But you know we had to go." Flock, one. Ari, zip.

"I hate stupid Ari!" Gazzy said. He punched and kicked the air in front of him. "He always ruins everything! Why does he hate us? It's not our fault they turned him into an Eraser!"

"It's not that simple, sweetie," I said.

"His dad left him," said Iggy bitterly. "Just like all of ours. Then they Eraserfied him. He's a walking time bomb."

"How does he track us so easily?" Angel asked. When she'd seen Cinderella's Castle, her face had looked as though it were made of sunlight. She was still young enough to really get caught up in the magic of an enormous, all-powerful marketing juggernaut.

"I don't know, Ange," I said. That was the ten-thousand-dollar question, in fact.

Below, the landscape was a spongy green, with nothing but a carpet of treetops to look down on. The trees ended abruptly, and beyond them we could see huge refineries or some kind of water-treatment plants or something.

I heard a faint buzz only a split second before a buglike helicopter popped up from behind the trees. It was pointed a bit away from us but almost immediately turned and headed in our direction, like a curious insect.

"Okay, guys, scatter and zoom," I instructed quickly. "Meet up in fifteen minutes, same heading." I angled my wings sharply and peeled off to one side. From a corner of my eye I saw the rest of the flock split up, zipping off in all directions.

The chopper hesitated. It had News 14 Florida painted on the side. So maybe not an Eraser chopper, maybe just a news cam tracking traffic.

But they'd seen us. I arched my back, pointing downward, then dropped into a screamingly fast descent. I rocketed toward the ground at two hundred miles an hour, which meant in less than a minute I had to angle out of it and swoop up again so I didn't squish like a mosquito on the windshield of the world.

Who said poetry was dead?

When I finally looked back, the chopper was nowhere in sight. A few minutes later, I saw various-sized dark specks coming at me. My flock.

Fang arrived first.

"We need to get out of the air," I told him.

"Black Ranger to Feather One," Total said softly. "Coast is clear. Come in, Feather One."

"Total, I'm right here," I whispered. "We don't even have walkie-talkies."

"No, but we should," Total whispered back. "I should have one, and it could-"

I put my hand over his mouth, looking at the mountains of rusted metal, ancient appliances, and empty car husks that stretched for acres around us. I signaled over my shoulder, and Fang, Gazzy, and Nudge scampered past me and crouched next to a bunch of doorless refrigerators.

There had been only one guard, who looked as if he couldn't guard his way out of a paper bag. We'd left him in front of his oil-drum fire clear on the other side of this enormous junkyard-chop shop. Or at least I assumed it was a chop shop, given the suspicious number of relatively late-model cars that were tucked away in an airport hangar-sized building.

Which was where we were heading.

"Okay, now, the last time we were in a car...," Fang whispered in my ear.

"That was different," I said impatiently. "Anyway, we're not going to steal a van."

"What are we going to steal this time?" Iggy whispered. "Can I have a turn driving?"

"Oh, ha ha," I said drily, and he smothered a snicker.

"That one," I whispered, pointing to a low, sleek, sporty number.

Which turned out to have no engine.

In fact, every one of these stupid cars had some huge problem with it: no steering wheel, or no wheels, or no dashboard, or no seats. An hour later I was ready to smack something in frustration.

"What now?" Fang asked in a low voice, crouching next to me. "Public transportation?"

I gave him a sour look.

"Max?" Nudge's voice was uncharacteristically quiet. She brushed some long curls out of her face. "I've been thinking."

Oh, here we go, I thought tiredly.

"If we take the seats out of the Camry, and the wheels off the Bug, and the battery out of the Caddy, and then we get the steering wheel from the Accord, and we drop that engine back into the Echo and hook up a new air filter, we could just take the Echo and be good to go." Her big brown eyes looked at me anxiously. "Don'tcha think?"

"Whoa," said Total, sitting down.

"Uh," I said.

"There's its air filter right on that table," she added helpfully.

"Since when do you know all this?" I asked, flabbergasted.

"I like cars. I always used to read Jeb's annual car issue from Consumer Reports. Remember?"

"Huh. Well, I guess that sounds like a plan, then," I said. "Everyone clear on what to do?"

Even the loser guard would have heard an engine starting, so we had to push the Frankenstein car out through the junkyard gate and a couple blocks away before we could even see if any of this worked.

When we were far enough away, Fang slid behind the steering wheel, and I applied my talent to hot-wiring the car.

The engine actually fired! True, it sounded rough, and the car backfired several times like rifle shots, but we were running, baby.

"Everybody in!" I said.

Which was when we discovered the final problem.

Little Echos aren't designed to hold six, count them six, larger-than-average-sized children.

And their wings.

And a dog.

"This is like a clown car," Total grumbled from my lap in the front seat.

"Why does the dog get to sit in your lap?" Gazzy asked plaintively, as we rattled and banged down the dark streets. "How about a kid?"

"Oh. 'The dog.' Very nice," said Total.

"Because you're not allowed to have people on your lap in the front seats," I explained. "It's not safe. If a cop saw us, we'd be stopped for sure. You want Total back there?"

Everyone in the back screamed no at the same time.

"Let's just deal, people," I said. "Only for a little while. We're going to stop as soon as we find a place to sleep."

"'The dog,'" Total muttered, still mad.

"Shh," I told him.

"Are you saying you're not a dog?" the Gasman asked. He was tired. We were all tired and hungry and cranky.

"Okay, you two," I said sternly. "Enough! Everyone quiet, okay? We're looking for a place to sleep. Just chill."

Fang glanced back in the rearview mirror. "Does anyone want to sing 'Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall'?"