Kingdom Keepers V(18)

“Wait!” Luowski shouted at his pal, who was taking aim.

This, because Maybeck vanished through the kitchen door seemingly at the speed of light.

At the sound of breaking pottery, Maybeck’s aunt pushed through to the back room.

“Terry?”

Luowski’s sidekick turned in that direction a fraction of a second before the door came open. The door hit his arm as Jelly stepped through, and reflexively he pulled the trigger.

Maybeck’s aunt sank to the floor like a sack of rocks.

Luowski said a string of words that didn’t bear repeating. The sidekick dropped the Taser like it had just burned his hand.

Maybeck, two steps into the kitchen, heard his name and felt the floor shake, and he knew Jelly was down. He came back through the door, his engine running on pure adrenaline. He went through Luowski like a Weedwhacker through tall grass, a blaze of arms and fists and legs. Pottery fell off the shelves, striking the floor percussively. Luowski never knew what hit him: one moment he was standing there freaking out that Robbie Barry had dropped the old lady; the next, he felt like he’d been hit and run over by a truck. He found himself lying on the floor fending off plates and mugs that were raining down from the sky.

Robbie Barry, on the other hand, knew what it was like to be a soda can that someone crushed with their heel before recycling. Maybeck slammed him into the doorjamb, slammed him like he was a housefly.

Jelly mumbled.

Maybeck turned to help her. He was pushed from behind and had to dive over his aunt and into the shop to avoid falling onto her.

Robbie Barry struggled to his knees and stood up. Luowski helped him through the back door. Maybeck rose to chase them, but his aunt mumbled something. She was semiconscious, muttering like someone in a nightmare. Her customers rushed to her side.

“It’s a heart attack!” “She fainted!” “I hope it’s not a stroke!”

Maybeck did not object when someone called 911. He wasn’t about to tell anyone she’d been shot by a Taser by two kids under the control of a Disney fairy with green skin; if he did that, it wouldn’t be Jelly taken to a hospital, it would be him!

He waited by her side. Just before the ambulance arrived she came around. Jelly knew a lot about her nephew’s involvement with the Kingdom Keepers. Not all, by any means, but more than most parents or guardians, because her nephew had been the first to be trapped in the Syndrome—held asleep like he was in a coma. So when he leaned in, he whispered, “Please, Jelly, tell them you fainted. They’ll run some tests. That’s all.”

She looked up at Maybeck with fire in her eyes. When his aunt got angry it was like a storm. Typically, Maybeck ran for cover. But not now. He held his own, staring right back at her, challenging her. It would help no one to bring the police into this, and they both knew it.

But deep within Maybeck another storm was brewing: these idiots had brought the fight into his home, had hurt the person closest to him. It aroused a primitive urge in him, one he hadn’t felt to this degree before. An urge for revenge: you have crossed a line you will never cross again.

With or without his fellow Keepers, Maybeck intended to deliver that message.





Many of the Keepers were now busier on the weekends than during the school week, trying to balance athletics and social commitments with their Keeper time.

Charlene—she was at cheerleading practice—missed the meeting in the Magic Kingdom’s Columbia Harbour House. But the rest of the Kingdom Keepers made it, as did six recent recruits to their cause—four boys and two girls. The meeting was held upstairs where the crowds rarely ventured, in a small room that bridged the boundary between Fantasyland and Liberty Square.

The six newcomers were all Cast Members from the various parks, employees who supported the Kingdom Keepers’ cause and had an allegiance to Disney and were sworn to secrecy by the nature of their employment agreements. It made for a tight group, where trust was never questioned.

Finn perched on the edge of a table looking at their faces. He felt a sense of pride and encouragement from there being twelve people where only a short time ago there had been seven. The oldest of the group was in her mid-twenties, a looker by the name of Megan Fuchs, a woman who had once helped the Keepers at DisneyQuest. Two boys were interns for an Imagineer named Alex Wright; because of this, they knew more about the Kingdom Keepers and their current activities than most.

“All of us,” Finn began, “are part of the battle for Base.” Heads nodded. “Some more than others. Some more in support. We all know it’s getting worse there. The other night there was a direct assault. A pair of DHIs turned them back, but the OTs are getting more and more aggressive.”