The four of us were on foot—or
in chair
in Cal’s case—with the car at least a quarter of a mile away in the empty and overgrown parking lot of this abandoned amusement park called Adventure City.
The park was a sad, forgotten skeleton of what had once been home to an elaborate thrill-ride and water-play area. Looping slides, towering roller coasters, fun houses, and other garishly painted buildings jutted up toward the sky, creating castle-like silhouettes against the overcast horizon.
But my G-T homing skills had led us here, and we’d gone through a hole in the fence not far from the entrance arch. There, we’d passed a huge stone clown holding a sign that swung drunkenly on large, rusted chains, the lettering promising us that this place was
AWWWWWESOME
! Underneath were admission prices, the numbers crossed out repeatedly, the rates decreasing again and again until, eventually, it had been almost entirely free to pay Adventure City a visit.
Apparently, whoever had run this
awwwwwesome
place had been hurting pretty bad when it finally closed a few years ago.
Of course, packs of bloodthirsty canines running freely in the park probably hadn’t helped business. Call me crazy.
There’d been no “Beware of Dogs” signs anywhere—at least not that I’d seen. That, along with that hole in the fence, hinted strongly that these dogs were feral and not part of anyone’s security setup. Except they seemed oddly well-groomed—plus this pack was definitely all pit bulls. Surely some mixed breeding would’ve occurred by now if they’d been left completely on their own.
The other weird thing was that Dana’s heightened G-T senses hadn’t warned us about the dogs before this current face-to-furry-face (times six).
In fact, ever since Cal had attempted to high-five the stone clown as he’d rolled past, Dana had been grumbling about how she could feel absolutely zero signs of life in here. So why were we here anyway?
I was carrying my biggest plastic water blaster, and I held it now at the ready. I had enough water to hit one dog—and maybe slow it down at best. But against six? We were in trouble. I scanned the area because my homing abilities were still pulling at me—and telling me that wherever John Morningstar was, he was close.
“I’m good with dogs,” Calvin said now, as we stood there in the middle of what used to be the park’s midway, in an aisle between decaying booths of games of skill and chance where for five dollars you could win a toy animal stuffed with sawdust that would fall apart within minutes of bringing it home. “You know, I used to have a pit bull.”
That news surprised me, but I didn’t move to look at him, afraid my doing so would bring those dogs charging toward us. So far, since we’d frozen, they’d kept their distance. “You did?”
He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Lucy. She, um, died in the accident.”
The accident, back when Cal was nine, when the gas line deteriorated and exploded, basically razing his house while he was home alone. Or at least I’d thought he’d been home alone. But apparently he’d had a pit bull named Lucy.
“Pit bulls are misunderstood,” Dana said, at the same time that Cal said, “Pit bulls are vilified—if they’re trained right, they’re extremely sweet.”
Dana added, “Miles, why don’t you adios yourself while we deal with this.”
“I’m not leaving Sky,” Milo said, his voice tight.
I was confused. “Wait, what?”
“His stepfather had a Doberman,” Dana explained. “Big dogs are kinda Milo’s kryptonite.”
If I’d had the time, I would’ve been irked. This was another of Milo’s secrets—something that I didn’t know but Dana apparently did.
“I’m seriously good with dogs,” Calvin volunteered. “Why don’t you guys just
all
back slowly away, while I—”
Dana cut him off. “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”
One of the pit bulls stepped slowly out from behind a cotton-candy stand, its rippling muscles spread taut beneath its short, tan-colored hair. If not for the insistent growl, I might have mistaken the animal for a horse; it was
that
big.
“Hey, girl,” Cal said. “Who’s a good doggy?”
At the sound of Cal’s voice, the dog leaned its head down, bared its teeth, and growled louder.
This was bad. This was worse than bad.
In my head, I ran through our options, the first one being
run
. My G-T skills included superhuman speed. I had no doubt that, push come to shove, I could outrun this pack of dogs. But my friends sure as hell couldn’t.
And Dana was already on top of option two, which was to get out of range of those powerful jaws and teeth. “Milo, Sky,” she ordered, “get up on top of the Whac-A-Mole booth.”
It
was
the sturdier-looking of the game booths that were on either side of us.
“Come on, Sky.”
I turned to see Milo waiting to boost me up. He’d interlocked his fingers so I could step into them, which I did, hooking my blaster over my shoulder as I climbed the rotting wood and scrambled up to the booth’s crumbling roof.
“Careful,” I warned as my foot went through the shingles. I was able to scrunch my way over to make room for him, but I could feel the entire structure groaning under the weight as Milo joined me up there. Again, I scanned the area—I could see a bit farther from the added height, but John Morningstar wasn’t lurking anywhere nearby. I did, however, see a seventh dog, even larger and lighter colored than the others, hanging back a bit. The dog seemed to look at me, but then slunk back farther into the shadows.
“There are seven of ’em,” I announced. “Maybe even more that we can’t see.”
Meanwhile, on the ground, the six smaller giant dogs were slowly moving closer to Cal and Dana.
“Cal,” Dana said, her eyes on the advancing pack, “I’m gonna lift you up onto the roof of that horse-race booth, ’kay?”
The rotting booth for a game where up to ten customers could use industrial-strength water guns to hit a little target and push their “horses” forward in a competitive race was directly across the midway from Milo and me. From this height, I could see the roof.
“It’s not gonna hold the weight of his chair,” I warned Dana.
“Dana, you get up there,” Cal said evenly. “I’m telling you, I’m good with dogs—”
“I don’t think anyone is
six
dogs good,” Dana countered.
“Seven,” I said.
“Go,” Cal said.
“Sorry, I’m not leaving you,” Dana told Cal, sounding anything but sorry. But then she turned to speak directly to the dog that was the closest. “I don’t want to hurt you, Roverette, but I will if I have to. So just…run along home and take your friends with you.”
I could tell from the way Dana was squinting that she was attempting to mind-control the pack leader, but the dog’s stance only got more aggressive.
“Oh, shit,” Dana said, and I knew she was out of ideas as the dog sprang toward her and Calvin, barking wildly.
All hell broke loose as the other dogs followed her lead.
Everything happened fast after that.
Dana was yelling, but I couldn’t hear a word of it, because the barking and snarling was so loud.
I did the only thing I could do—I fired my blaster and propelled the water toward the pack leader. But if the equivalent of a small bucket of water in the face slowed the dog down, I didn’t see it. And now, of course, I was unarmed.
Cal, meanwhile, had zoomed in front of Dana as if intending to use himself and his wheelchair as a human shield. Dana in turn used her G-T TK to fling his chair up and into the air, where it landed several feet back, away from the approaching pack.
Then the lead dog flew back through the air, yelping in surprise. But Dana set the animal down with as much care as she’d given Calvin, and it immediately charged forward again.
“Damn it, I
don’t
want to hurt you!” she was shouting at the dog.
Cal also immediately gunned it back toward Dana. “
Get up on the freaking roof!
” he was shouting, and Dana finally did just that, clambering up onto the horse-race booth, which creaked and groaned beneath her.
But she was true to her promise and didn’t leave Calvin behind. She lifted him up with her telekinesis, and instead of setting him down, she held him there, hovering in midair, a good ten feet above the snapping and snarling dogs.
“Now what?” Calvin shouted what we were all thinking.
“I can outrun them,” I shouted. “I’ll get them to follow me and lead them away from you—”
“No.” Milo said it at the same time as Dana, but he added, “If you trip and fall, they’ll tear you to pieces. You have no idea what a single dog can do—let alone
six
of them.”
But I could tell from the look in Milo’s eyes that he
did
know—that he’d witnessed it, firsthand.
God.
Dana, meanwhile, was getting a workout. She put Calvin down about a hundred yards away, and his landing was bumpier than usual. The dogs raced toward him, and she picked him back up just in time and brought him flying back toward us.
“She can’t keep that up forever,” Milo said, and I nodded, looking around for a way to help. I needed water. A
lot
of water.
I reached out with my mind, seeking it, feeling for it. I sensed a lot of it nearby, but something was holding it back, keeping it from me.
On the ground, the remains of the puddle I’d left by firing my blaster at the pack leader shimmered and lifted up into the air—like droplets in zero gravity. But there was even less of it now—most had already evaporated, leaving me with maybe a half a cup. Yay?
“Skylar, WTF?” Dana shouted, and I realized that the booth she was on top of was shaking—because all ten of the water guns attached to the front counter were straining at the ends of their hoses! Water! From those hoses! Of course!
But I couldn’t get the triggers to move to release the water—unlike my water guns, they must’ve been locked—and Dana was using all of her power to keep Calvin hovering away from the dog pack. I realized I’d have to go down there and do it by hand.
“
Milo!
” I shouted, and even though he was still carefully not touching me, I grabbed his arm. And there it was again—Milo’s giant emotional wall. But I had no time to be mad or frustrated or sad. I just boxed up everything I was feeling as I stuck to business and telepathically told him my plan, even as I shouted to Dana, “Put Cal down again as far away as you can!”
“What the hell…?” she asked.
“Just do it!” I shouted back as I squeezed Milo’s hand and sent him a quick
Stay here
.
Dana sent Cal flying, the dogs all bounded away, and I jumped down off the Whac-A-Mole and scrambled toward the water guns, keeping an eye out for that humongous seventh dog.
“What are you doing?” I shouted as Milo followed me. I’d told him to stay put. In truth, I had no idea if this was going to work—if the water guns really were attached to a still-active water supply or if there were only a few remaining gallons of water left in those straining hoses. If it was the latter, we were still up shit’s very dried-out creek.
Milo didn’t bother answering me. He knew what I was hoping to do, and he just grabbed as many of the water guns as he could. His fingers were big—he could squeeze the triggers on three of them with each hand. His only limit was the length of those hoses. I followed his lead and got three more guns spraying between my two smaller hands.
To my relief, the water came out with quite a bit of force and volume. It would’ve had to, in order to hit the horse targets that were all the way on the other side of the booth.
But Milo and I weren’t trying to hit any targets. In fact, we aimed the water out into the midway, where I used my TK to catch and contain it, adding it to the droplets from the puddle. It hung in the air in front of us, a rapidly growing bubble of liquid.
Dana, however, was still not convinced this was going to do us any good. “Great,” she shouted, as she lifted Cal’s chair again and again, plopping him down like a giant dog toy, enticing the pack to lunge and chase after him. “Now they’re not just gonna be angry dogs; they’re gonna be wet and
extra
-angry dogs!”
“I’m not going to use it to get the dogs wet,” I said, glaring hard at that water, stretching and elongating the bubble into a giant gelatinous worm.
I focused harder, attempting to stir it a bit within its confines, and it churned and splashed and gurgled. And still Milo and I sprayed those water guns, so it grew and expanded from a worm into a full-on water snake that I moved. I curved it and formed a giant, waist-high circle—one that I wrapped around us, locking Milo and me inside…and the dogs out.
It wasn’t long before the gurgling became a roar.
“Holy shit!” Dana said—at least that’s how I read her lips from her perch on that roof. She brought Cal sailing back to us, landing him inside my circle of water, and jumping down from the low roof to join us in there, too.
The water rushing around us was louder than the dogs
and
Dana,
and
Cal, who was hollering as he landed beside Dana. “Holy Schnikeys!” At least, I
think
that’s what Cal yelled.
Milo glanced at me for just a moment before returning his attention to the glistening wall of water that swirled, low to the ground, around us. The dogs were completely freaked out—they didn’t dare approach.
My plan was to keep this wall spinning and moving with us and around us as we headed back to the entrance arch. I had no idea if I could maneuver it through the chain-link fence, or whether attempting to do that would make it fall apart. But at that point, I figured we could run like hell for Calvin’s car.
I now had plenty of water to work with, so I released the triggers of my water guns, and Milo did the same as I made a
move forward
motion, pointing back in the direction we’d come. Dana nodded, adding a
come closer
gesture. We huddled as tightly to Cal’s chair as we could—the footprint of our water wall had to be as small as possible to fit through the midway alley. Bumping into a booth or telephone pole could potentially send the entire thing splashing to the ground, leaving us open to attack.