Kingdom Keepers IV(50)

“Philby?!” he cried.

The wind in the tunnel was at full speed—hurricane force. Finn was sliding backward, clawing at the goop, trying not to lose track of Philby. Suddenly, a hand appeared. Finn grabbed it. He felt himself braked as he and Philby joined hands—Philby had caught on to the edge of the intersection. Together they strained to hold on, Finn repeatedly struck by flying trash bags. Then the wind all but stopped. He and Philby were in the adjoining pipe.

Light shone through a circular crack a few yards ahead.

Philby saw it, too. “That’s the way out! The system has supplementary pressurization stations,” Professor Philby explained. “There are dozens of extra fans along the route. All connecting pipes must be airtight.”

“Maybe another time,” Finn said.

Philby led Finn to the end of the short section of pipe. Together they managed to unlock and push open a maintenance door against the drag of the wind. Philby used a plastic bottle to jam the bottom of the door open. Finn climbed out first, down a metal ladder. Philby followed. They were behind heavy equipment, a cardboard compactor, in an alcove off the Utilidor.

The boys were disgusting—covered in a layer of stinking brown sludge from head to toe. “We cannot just walk out there like this,” Finn said. “How are we ever going to pull this off?”

Philby’s eyes ticked back and forth—the professor at work. He poked his head through a network of smaller pipes. “Got something,” he said, crawling through. He returned a moment later with a small, greasy hand towel. They took turns cleaning each other’s face.

“We’re still a mess,” Finn said, indicating his clothes. “I’m like a human booger.”

“This is a cardboard recycling station.”

“Yeah? So?”

“It’s closing time. Everyone wants to get home. You think anyone’s going to look twice at a couple of kids coming down the hall wearing cardboard boxes?”

“I like it!”

The boys snuck around to the side where dozens of collapsed cardboard boxes leaned against the wall. Philby sized up two of them, and the boys reassembled them, overlapping the flaps to make them square and sturdy again. Philby then tore sections out of the flaps: one for Finn’s neck, and one for each of his legs on the opposite end of the big box. It was marked doritos. Philby’s was sun chips. They got past the machinery, and Philby quickly helped Finn into his box so that it hung on his shoulders and ended just above his knees, making walking awkward. Philby climbed into his box, but had trouble getting the bottom flaps closed. Finn tried squatting but it did no good—he was just a big cardboard box. Finally, Philby gave up. His box hung from his shoulders with his head sticking out, but the bottom flaps hung down, moving with his every step.

With Finn walking awkwardly in the lead, the two boys moved out into the thirty-foot-wide Utilidor tunnel joining dozens of Cast Members. Philby had been right: no one gave a pair of moving boxes a second thought.

Twenty yards later, they reached a set of windows on their left. Venetian blinds drawn from the inside. They walked past.

“The server room,” Philby hissed from behind.

Finn didn’t need to be reminded. He’d been here more than once. The last time, a certain green-skinned fairy had been here as well.

Philby tried to get his eye to the window at the edge of the blind so he could see through, but the box was too big and it blocked him from leaning in close. He turned to the side, but again the box blocked him from seeing in.

Suddenly, the door swung open. Finn spun around and said to Philby, “Here, I’ll fix it for you.” He spun Philby and his box around, mainly to hide their faces.

Three Cast Members came out of the server room, saying good-night to each other. Two of them wished the other a good vacation, and the man thanked them. Finn turned back as the door was shutting. He got a look into the room, seeing no one. But then, reflected off the door’s safety glass, he caught sight of a man at a desk.

“There’s still at least one guy in there. At a desk over on the far side of the room.”

“Well, we can’t just stand around here. We’ve got to do something.”

Finn said, “The smells coming out of this box are going to make me puke. We’d better keep moving.”

The boys continued on toward an exit where people dressed in street clothes were leaving. Golf carts laden with everything from bottled water to Pirates of the Caribbean muskets streamed past. The Magic Kingdom was shifting into maintenance mode. Stores and restaurants would be restocked. There would be painting and carpentry, cleaning, and polishing carried out within the Park for the next several hours. The boys had to reach the server, gain access, determine which Park Willa was in, and launch a rescue attempt. Every second counted.