Kingdom Keepers VI(44)
Charlene was down, a bird tangled in her blond curls. The frigate pecked at her scalp, the blood turning her hair pink. Finn grabbed the flapping bird and choked it with his bare hands until its talons released the knot of blond hair; he threw it into a wall with enough force to send feathers floating in the air. He and Charlene pulled another frigate off Willa, as Andy suddenly turned hero, waving his arms and fending off the next wave of diving birds like a one-man antiaircraft gun.
“Go!” Andy roared. His arms bled from taking direct hits, but he stood his ground, knocking the birds out of the air like it was a video game.
“Come on!” Finn hollered. Andy’s crew, Willa, Philby, and Charlene bounded up the stairs. Andy went down behind them. Finn stopped and hurried back. He fought through the flapping wings, found the man’s hand and grabbed hold. Finn pulled Andy out from beneath the cloak of black feathers and sharp beaks.
Finn took a shot to the head. Another to his shoulder. Andy steadied him, the man’s face pecked and bleeding. Together they entered the covered part of the stairs that climbed to the starting platform for the AquaDuck waterslide. It sounded as if they were suddenly inside a kettle drum as the birds collided outside. Finn looked back to see scores of the black birds dropping to the stairs and cartwheeling down lifelessly.
For a moment it felt safe. They caught their collective breath.
“Thanks,” Andy said, gasping as he bent to grab his knees.
“You saved us,” Finn said.
“Not the way it felt when I was under that pile.”
The lights went out. At least that was how it seemed to both Finn and Andy. But the AquaDuck’s stairway was lit only by natural light. Light now blocked by a thousand beating wings.
If the first two waves of frigate birds had seemed like an attack, this was an invasion. This was a dam bursting. No longer dozens, but hundreds—thousands!—of the enormous black birds came at Finn and Andy like a wall of white-headed hatred. Beaks outstretched, the flock filled every gap of fresh air.
“RUN!” the two men cried, taking two stairs at a time.
They reached a landing that carried a bunch of signs and climbed the next set of stairs, already shouting. “GO! GO! GO!”
“You can’t do that!” an adult’s voice called out, his words drowned by splashing.
Finn made the mistake of looking back: ten thousand black eyes coming at him at sixty miles an hour.
“Dive, man! Dive!” Andy called out to the Cast Member whose job it was to distribute the ride’s inflatable rafts. There was no time for rafts, though, as Willa and the others had demonstrated, entering headfirst into the slide’s acrylic tube. Though completely against the rules—rules the Cast Member was there to enforce—Andy glanced up to see a wall of pointed beaks heading up the stairs at him, and dove into the waiting tube.
Finn and Andy followed, facedown like they were bodysurfing. The water was warm and moving incredibly fast. They flew out over the ocean, twelve stories below, and then shot in a straight line for the huge screen on Deck 11. Birds collided with the clear plastic wall of the water tube. The wall of frigates behind them hit a dead end on the upper platform, self-destructing as they piled into one another.
The water course suddenly dropped out from under Finn, then pushed him up an incline and sent him into darkness as he traveled behind the Funnel Vision screen. Another turn. Daylight. A straightaway. Birds dropped from the sky, imploding on the plastic tube and falling dead to the deck below. Finn tucked into a ball and managed to ride feet first the rest of the way. The AquaDuck spit him out into an open trough where Andy’s crew, Willa, Charlene, and Philby were just climbing out, soaking wet.
“VIPs or not, you’re not going anywhere!” shouted a Cast Member. “You’re all barred from using the AquaDuck for the remainder of the cruise. Hand over your room cards this instant!”
The water had washed the blood from Finn and Andy. Neither was as badly injured as it had appeared.
“We’ll have to do that later,” Finn told the man.
“Back to Maybeck!” he shouted to his fellow Keepers.
They took off running—also not allowed.
* * *
“They’re calling it blue-sky lightning,” Philby said. The Keepers had gathered in the ship’s Health Center––its hospital. Maybeck was stretched out on a table wearing a blood pressure cuff and other sensors. He remained unconscious. The Keepers had been left alone with him. They were supposed to be shooting more footage for the 365, but Andy and his crew were off, trying to pull together their damaged gear and explain to the Disney Channel execs what had happened.