Kingdom Keepers(56)

Finn didn’t need all the facts. Sometimes he wished Philby would just keep them to himself.

The two boys watched in horror as, one by one, the bones vibrated and broke free from the rock. They did not fall. They did not break. They held together as one…giant…

“Run!” Philby shouted.

A cloud of dust rose behind them as the ground trembled with a rhythmic clomp, clomp, clomp.

Footsteps. Big footsteps.

All at once, the T. rex skeleton came over the hill, following the tracks. The thing was huge.

The dinosaur had all its bones, with no eyes, no skin, no flesh—but all its teeth.

Philby shouted, “Keep running! Don’t slow down!”

Finn’s cold, unwilling legs slowed him. He scrambled ahead. The T, rex charged, lowering its head and coming for them. Finn was behind Philby, close to the charge.

Clomp! Clomp! Clomp!

The ground shook so violently that Finn fell. He slid down the rails, caught hold, and regained his balance.

The bones clattered as the dinosaur charged. The boys climbed the next rise and jumped over. The beast moved faster.

Finn made a mistake by glancing back. The beast snorted dust out of the holes in its skull where nostrils should have been. It lowered its head once again and picked up speed, the jaws clapping open and shut, sounding like a door being slammed.

Finn cleared the top of the roller coaster’s next rocky peak, with the dinosaur’s jaw bones snapping only a few feet from him now. Finn was going to be eaten. He slid down the last descending slope of the roller coaster, as if he were sliding down an enormous banister.

The track leveled off here, giving the dinosaur the advantage. It snapped and caught a piece of Finn’s shirt.

The track curved ahead. Finn, finding speed he didn’t know he had, cried, “Help!”

“Physics class!” shouted Philby back at him. “The track is banked.”

“What do I care?”

The T. rex stumbled and lost a few yards. The boys hurried up the slight rise into the steep turn.

“The track is banked!” Philby repeated.

Finn understood then what had to be done. He was the one trailing. His heart lodged in his throat as he stopped just before the apex of the turn. He faced the beast, making a target of himself.

“Come and get it!” he shouted at the T. rex.

He waved his arms like a matador taunting the bull.

The huge mass of rattling bones, surrounded by a cloud of dust, bore down on him. Faster and faster it came.

Finn waited…and waited…knowing he had to time his move perfectly.

The T. rex charged.

Just as the skeleton’s teeth were a foot away from his chest, Finn dove off the track.

The beast faltered, lurched, and tipped to its left when the track suddenly curved to the right. The bones of an outer leg splintered and snapped at the knee. The monster rolled, broke through the plywood of the scene’s mountain backdrop, and tumbled over the side.

Finn watched as it landed with a noisy explosion of broken bones that scattered like tree branches.

Philby, who had also stopped, looked down at Finn and helped him up to the rail.

“Wait till they see that on their cameras!”

The boys turned and hurried off into the night.





27


Since all of the kids were hungry, they left the apartment together and reconvened at Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe. Finn led the way, passing right through the locked front door.

Maybeck surprised the others by cooking up decent-tasting turkey burgers. They stayed in the kitchen area and kept the lights off so as not to be seen. Exit signs and a few overhead security lights provided the only illumination. Finn and Philby fashioned a table out of a rolling cart with locking wheels. Inverted plastic tubs and buckets served as chairs. The two girls sat together on one side, Finn and Philby on the other. Maybeck joined them last and took the head of the table.

Philby placed a paper napkin in front of them.

“This is everything we have,” he explained, jotting down the letters they’d acquired by following the clues in the fable:

F M E Y I R S T P N

“They must spell something,” Charlene said.

“If I was at a computer…If I had an anagram generator,” Philby said.

He wrote the letters out again, this time leaving more room around each one. He tore the letters apart. A few minutes later they had Scrabble letters made out of a torn napkin.

The kids studied the letters, calling out words they saw.

“MEN,” Charlene said.

“Leave that to you!” Willa quipped.

Philby set the letters aside.

Finn said, “SPIT.”

He pulled these out as well.

“FRY is left,” Philby pointed out.

“MEN FRY SPIT?” Willa asked.

“MEN SPIT FRY?” Charlene suggested.