Kingdom Keepers(40)

“I’ve taken this ride a zillion times,” Philby said, “but this is pretty cool.”

Finn didn’t love being soaking wet, but he too was enjoying himself.

Then they entered a dark scene, a cavelike space filled with Audio-Animatronic figures. The characters, turned off for the night, all stood frozen in midgesture.

“Kinda creepy,” Finn said. He’d had enough. The going was perfectly flat here, the current slow. He grabbed the rail and prepared to climb out.

Philby dove forward, splashing them both, and grabbed hold of Finn.

“You can’t do that!” Philby warned him. “If we climb out, we’ll trip the alarm.”

“What alarm?” Finn challenged.

“They use infrared sensors to detect anyone who tries to get out of a log car during the ride.”

“But the ride’s shut down.”

“But is the infrared shut down?” Philby asked. “I doubt it. Besides, there are thirty-six hidden cameras along the ride. If we climb out, we’ll be photographed.”

“It’s pitch-black!”

“But we’re not,” he said, indicating his own glow. “We’ll be photographed, trust me. And if we’re photographed, we’re identified and busted,” Philby said.

“How do you know any of this stuff?”

“Can you spell Google?”

“And you waited until now to tell me this?” Finn asked.

“I wasn’t going to write you a report,” Philby snapped back irritably.

Finn’s fear grew more intense the deeper they ventured into this cave. They floated faster now as the route twisted and turned. The waist-deep water in the ride’s chute was getting deeper; and the water was flowing faster.

“If I remember right, we’re going into a small—drop,” Philby announced.

Both boys rushed down the drop. Finn’s head went underwater, and he heard something grinding. Something mechanical.

He bobbed to the surface. “Did you hear that?”

“The ride’s turned on,” Philby declared, his voice unsteady. “That means the log cars are moving.”

Finn recalled the marching dolls. He had no desire to try to outrace metal boats shaped to look like logs.

Another drop.

The water tried to swallow them. Both boys remained on their backs, arms extended to stay afloat. At the bottom, Finn looked ahead to see another tunnel approaching.

“I don’t like this!” he said.

As they neared the tunnel they saw lights and heard music playing. Voices sang, “You gotta keep moving along.”

The robot characters were moving; giant creatures with long noses and big bugged-out eyes rocked and danced. One threw a fishing line at the water.

Finn said, “I’m starting to think getting busted wouldn’t be too bad.”

“Not yet!” Philby announced. “We’ve got to hang in there.”

The two boys swam and bounced and bumped their way along the water route. They passed fake green hills and low-hanging tree branches, and a six-foot-tall rabbit holding a paintbrush. These things looked devilish to Finn as he saw them looming above him.

“The ride takes a total of eleven minutes to complete,” Philby said. “If we’re halfway along—and I bet we are—then the first log car shouldn’t arrive for another six minutes. By that time, we’ll only have a couple minutes to go.”

“Why doesn’t that sound terribly reassuring?”

Next were mountain backdrops and twelve-foot-high bears. Finn looked away, cold and shivering, and anticipated the arrival of a steel log.

“Clouds!” Philby announced.

Finn saw them in the backdrop. They were painted behind a mountain range. He wormed a hand into his pocket and donned the pair of 3-D glasses, just as Philby did.

Nothing. The clouds looked perfectly normal.

Finn squeezed the glasses back into his pocket with difficulty. “This is crazy,” he said. “What are we doing here?”

“The more important question,” Philby answered, “is who knows we’re in here, and why was the ride turned on?”

“If you’re trying to cheer me up, you’re not doing such a great job,” Finn fired back.

A giant rabbit jumped across the scene, and called out loudly, which caused Finn to splash in self-defense. Okay, Finn thought, now I’m defending myself against mechanical rabbits. What if these robots come alive the same way the dolls did? “Okay,” he said. “I would like to get out of here!”

“More clouds!” Philby announced.

Finn fumbled with his glasses again. Wearing them, he took in the clouds and sky. Still nothing.

Presently, there were chipmunk voices singing something at such a high pitch and volume that Finn couldn’t understand a word. But he could feel the logs approaching. Philby kept glancing over his shoulder. He could feel them too.