Secrets and Shadows

by Bryan Chick

  Noah waited . . . and waited. His lungs began to burn for air.

  The man turned and rejoined the boys. Noah poked his head up. Everyone had their backs to him and their eyes on Frosty, who once again was distracting them.

  Now was his chance. Inches from the tunnel wall, he swam to the surface, his arms and legs stroking madly as he struggled against his wet clothes. As he went, he was suddenly seized by his jacket collar and spun around. Objects that looked like white tree trunks were stroking the water on both sides of him. A polar bear was pulling him along. The bear’s jaws were clamped onto his collar, and the force of the water had Noah pinned against the animal’s stomach, making for a bumpy ride.

  But if Frosty was playing with the barrel on the other side of the tunnel, who was this?

  There was one answer: Blizzard. The mighty polar bear had emerged from somewhere—maybe a cavern in the big rock formation above, maybe the Secret Zoo—and, spotting trouble, had dived in to help.

  The water around Noah began to brighten. Blizzard wasn’t only swimming forward, he was also swimming up, and Noah understood why. The angle concealed Noah from view. If someone inside the tunnel were to look their way, they’d see nothing but the bear’s wide back.

  Blizzard rounded the bend at the far end of the pool, leaving the tunnel out of sight. There was no underwater view into this part, which stopped ten feet away at a concrete wall.

  Blizzard broke through the surface and released Noah, who greedily sucked back a breath of air. Noah turned and bumped his nose on the bear’s long muzzle. Blizzard’s wet fur clung sleekly to the contours of his head.

  Noah opened his mouth to say something, but was immediately pulled back into the water. The bear plummeted and headed straight for the end of the pool, where a small section of the wall swung inward. Blizzard swam with Noah through the opening and the hatch fell shut, triggering on a row of lights in an underwater tunnel. Bricks the size of shoe boxes lined the mossy walls. Patches of stringy seaweed swirled and swayed.

  The Grottoes. A different area of them.

  Perhaps forty yards long, the tunnel branched at least ten times. Velvet curtains were draped across the mouths of the branches. Before Noah had a chance to read where they went, Blizzard turned, paddled through a gateway, and emerged in the middle of another dark underwater cave. No longer than twenty feet, it was shaped in a curve. Beyond the opening at each end lay a bright channel of water bounded by a wall of ice and a wall of glass. Noah realized that they were in a rounded corner that connected two perpendicular channels of water.

  Something crashed into Blizzard. A penguin. It veered wildly from the impact, banging against the cave wall. At least five more penguins steered around them, whap-ping them with their stiff flippers as they swam into the bright, adjoining channel of water.

  Noah realized they were in the huge aquarium in Penguin Palace, the penguin exhibit in the Clarksville Zoo. This four-sided aquarium had a six-foot-deep channel of water that bordered a fabricated iceberg. It had glass walls with concrete corners; visitors could see through the walls, but they couldn’t see into the corners.

  More penguins closed in on Blizzard and Noah. The bear spun quickly, shoving his wide rear end out at them. A few penguins dodged to the floor, bumping Noah’s feet as they passed. Others swerved to the sides. Blizzard swam with Noah out of the corner cave and emerged into the bright water. To their left now was the tall iceberg; to their right, the tall glass wall. As penguins continued to swim around them, Noah saw their feathered rumps and rising trails of bubbles.

  Without slowing, Blizzard momentarily surfaced, allowing both himself and Noah a breath of air. As he dipped back down, he cut in front of a penguin. The bird dodged to the side, struck the glass wall, and slid across it, the curve of its bulbous belly pressed flat.

  About halfway along the channel of water, Noah gazed through the aquarium wall and his heart dropped. Just beyond the long stretch of glass stood several people, visitors to the zoo.

  Blizzard and Noah were being watched.

  Chapter 36

  The Ba-eh and the Ba-oy

  In the dim light of Penguin Palace stood a middle-aged woman. She was talking on her cell phone, pacing the room, and ignoring her two young girls, who were standing inches away from the big aquarium. One girl was two years old, the other five, and both had their palms pressed flat against the glass. The girls stared bright-eyed into the aquarium, watching a parade of penguins swimming below the surface, their bodies swooping up and down, leaving a wake of bubbles. Dim aquarium light spilled onto the girls’ faces, softening their already delicate features.

  The two-year-old raised her arms and clapped her palms against the glass. The resulting smack! resonated through the glass-and-concrete quarters of Penguin Palace.

  “Penguin!” she said—or meant to say. But her inexperienced tongue got caught on the nub of her pacifier, causing the word to come out like “Pah-gwah!”

  “That’s right,” the five-year-old said, touching her sister’s shoulder. “Pen-guin,” she repeated, careful to enunciate each syllable.

  They smiled at each other. As they directed their attention back to the aquarium, the five-year-old gasped and took a step back. A polar bear, white and massive, was swimming toward them from around the corner, its thick legs paddling sluggishly. It nearly filled the channel between the glass and the iceberg, and, inconceivably, it was pulling a boy along, its jaws locked on his jacket collar. The boy seemed perfectly calm, as if this type of thing happened every day.

  The five-year-old’s chin dropped. Her wide eyes felt ready to burst from their sockets. Unable to move or even breathe, she watched the bear swim in front of her and then off toward the corner at the far end of the glass, penguins squirting around it. She had a plain view of the bear’s short-tailed rump as it casually swam into the dark turn and disappeared.

  For a few seconds, neither sister spoke. They simply stared into the corner after the bear.

  It was the two-year-old who finally broke the silence. Around a mouthful of pacifier, she said, “Ba-eh. Ba-oy.”

  The five-year-old glanced back at her mother, who apparently hadn’t seen a thing.

  Chapter 37

  The Underwater Handoff

  Blizzard swam around another dark corner and emerged on a different side of the aquarium. Noah felt a rush of relief when he saw that there were no people here. Blizzard hauled him up to the surface for a fresh breath.

  Noah had no idea what Blizzard was trying to do. He was more worried than ever. Penguin Palace was seeing its first visitors of the day, and Blizzard and Noah were swimming around in plain view.

  Halfway down this side of the aquarium, Noah’s feet bumped against something. He looked down to see a penguin squeezing between Noah and the aquarium floor. Its body bobbed with each stroke of its flippers, and it held the bear’s speed. The penguin was so big that Noah recognized it immediately. Podgy.

  Noah, his toes skipping off the penguin’s feet, thought how surreal his circumstances had become: he was being pulled through a zoo aquarium, a polar bear above him and a penguin below.

  Blizzard dropped Noah squarely on Podgy’s back. The scout held on and allowed his legs to float out behind the penguin’s feet. It was a familiar position for them, in the water as well as in the sky.

  Blizzard swung around and headed back the way he’d come. Noah glanced over his shoulder and watched the bear’s furry rump shrink as the two animals swam apart. As Blizzard disappeared into the dark corner, Noah was certain that the bear would swerve into a cave and escape Penguin Palace.

  Podgy carried Noah into the final bend of the aquarium. As the light blinked out, they veered toward the iceberg and plunged into a hole. Noah had no guess where they might end up.

  Chapter 38

  Old Iron Makes a Fuss

  Megan sped Old Iron across the parking lot to the main entrance of the zoo. She realized that she couldn’t waste the time required to get into Arctic Town
—not the time it would take on foot, anyway. As she saw it, there was only one way to get across the zoo quickly enough. With this in mind, she steered the minibike onto the sidewalk, where at least twenty people were walking.

  “Mooove!” Megan hollered.

  Ella squeezed her friend’s waist. “Are you nuts?”

  People jumped off the sidewalk in all directions, leaving a clear path. Megan raced forward at full throttle. Old Iron clipped a garbage can, knocking it aside with a hollow-sounding clunk that exploded crumpled napkins into the air. She rode through the open gates of the zoo, bounced onto the shortest path to Arctic Town, and sped away, no doubt leaving a lasting impression on the crowd. The people at the entrance would surely have the image of Megan burned into their heads for the next few months: her hard scowl, her snapping pigtails, her body leaning over the handlebars of the minibike—an unlikely machine of terror.

  Megan glanced back and spotted Richie. He was steering Pinky Pedals through the people scattered all around, saying, “Excuse me . . . sorry . . . pardon me . . .” and continuously ringing the bell on the handlebars.

  Deeper inside the zoo, people idled beside exhibits and struggled to stay warm, their hands pulled up into their sleeves and their chins buried in their jackets. As Megan rolled forward, Old Iron’s growl raised curious glances: a young girl racing a battered minibike across the zoo was not an ordinary sight.

  When they sped past the outdoor exhibits, the animals awoke, curious at the sound. Some craned their necks to watch her go; others ran along the edges of their yards. At Little Dogs of the Prairie, more than thirty prairie dogs jumped to their haunches for a better view. At the Strip of Stripes, a dozen zebras stampeded across the grassy plain and raced along the fence beside the noisy minibike.

  She suddenly became conscious of the time. How much had passed? How badly now did Noah need help? Frightened by the possible answers, she squeezed the throttle, and Old Iron hurtled forward at maximum speed.

  Seconds later, she spotted something that made her hammer the brakes. Tires squealing, the minibike went into a slide and came to a stop. Richie pulled up beside them.

  “No way,” Ella said as the three scouts stared at the scene in front of them. “How?”

  Chapter 39

  Flamingo Fountain

  Noah rode Podgy through the underwater tunnel. Streaked with algae and slime, it had many branches, each one covered by a velvet curtain. Noah read the plates as they sped past: THE POLAR POOL; THE SECRET WOTTER PARK; A-LOTTA-HIPPOPOTAMI. Podgy abruptly veered into a tunnel marked FLAMINGO FOUNTAIN.

  The new tunnel looked like the others Noah had seen, but longer. It continued straight for at least a hundred feet before ending at a point of light. Seeming to understand that Noah needed a breath, Podgy picked up speed. Pressure built against Noah’s face, and the earflaps on his cap wagged like the ears of a sprinting dog.

  They reached the end of the tunnel and emerged in a pool of water. This one was square and shallow. The big penguin leaped like a porpoise into the air so that Noah could breathe. As they splashed down, Noah fell off and tumbled, his arms and legs banging on the floor of the pool. When he stopped, he stood up in water that came to his chest. Sensing something beside him, he turned and saw a flamingo—a two-story-high statue of a pink flamingo standing on one leg. Noah was in Flamingo Fountain, the indoor fountain near the center of the Clarksville Zoo. This time, the Grottoes hadn’t opened to an exhibit or a sector—this time they’d ended at an ordinary fountain.

  Noah watched Podgy circle back through the water and disappear into the tunnel. Noah was on his own from this point on.

  Flamingo Fountain was housed in a small glass building. Noah stared out through the clear wall in front of him and spotted three people: a boy on a pink bicycle and two girls on a smoky minibike. He couldn’t believe it—the scouts!

  Noah staggered to the edge of the fountain and climbed out. He stepped through the glass door and stumbled over to his friends.

  “Noah?” Megan said.

  “Megan?” Noah said. He pointed an unsteady finger at Old Iron. “That’s . . . that’s my minibike.”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Megan. “We’ve got to get out of here. I think I just made a bunch of people really, really mad. And I don’t want to hang around for questions.”

  Ella hopped off Old Iron. “Here,” she said to Noah. “I’ll follow you guys.”

  Noah climbed onto the minibike and clasped his arms around Megan’s waist.

  Megan turned to her friends and said, “Head to the back gates.”

  She squeezed the throttle, spun Old Iron around, and raced the battered minibike deeper into the zoo, Richie pedaling after her, and Ella following on foot.

  Chapter 40

  The Escape into Giraffic Jam

  As the scouts raced across the empty zoo toward the back gates, someone charged out from behind Giraffic Jam, a young teenager with a knit cap and a big backpack. Tameron. He stepped onto the sidewalk, waving his hands over his head. Megan squeezed the brakes and narrowly avoided hitting him. Ella and Richie stopped, too.

  Tameron looked furious. He said, “Can’t go that way. Cops are all over the exits.”

  “Cops?” Megan said. “The police are here?”

  “I guess someone didn’t appreciate you guys almost running them over at the gates. People got cell phones, you know.”

  “Then where—”

  “This way,” Tameron said. “We need to hide you out. Follow me.”

  He led the scouts to Giraffic Jam, where two security guards ran up to them.

  “Take the bikes,” Tameron said. “Hide them.”

  The guards shot angry looks at the scouts, snatched away the bikes, then quickly rolled them off.

  “Let’s go,” Tameron said.

  The Descender led the scouts into Giraffic Jam. The circular building was twice the size of a movie theater. At least thirty feet overhead, ivy-covered walls ended at a domed ceiling made of glass and framed with narrow steel beams. Trees were scattered about, and waterfalls splashed into shallow beds.

  In front of the scouts, a flight of steps rose to a wooden deck. More than ten feet off the ground, this deck circled the interior of the building, providing a place for visitors to feed the giraffes. The animals would stretch their necks over the railing of the walkway and use their long tongues to lap pellets from the visitors’ palms.

  “C’mon!” Tameron said.

  He charged up the stairs and the scouts followed, their footfalls thumping on the planks. Sunlight pierced the domed roof and spread across their bodies. The Descender stopped at a spot along the railing and stared out. At least ten giraffes were idling around, chewing on leaves and grass. He waved his hand over his head and whistled loudly. A giraffe turned, spotted the Crossers, and swiftly walked over. It stretched its neck across the railing, lightly bumped its big head against Noah, and batted its long, plush eyelashes at the scouts.

  “Do like I do,” Tameron instructed.

  He faced the giraffe and made a clicking sound with his tongue. The animal swung its neck across the walk-way, nearly plowing over Megan. When the giraffe’s neck came around to Tameron, he reached out and wrapped his arms around it. The giraffe hoisted him off the walk-way and over the rail. Then, with a quick drop of its head, it lowered Tameron to the ground.

  Other giraffes stepped forward, their hooves crunching fallen twigs. As they swung their heads over the walkway, the scouts wrapped their arms around their necks, allowing the animals to lift them over the rail and down to the grassy floor. Then they chased after Tameron, who was already making his way across Giraffic Jam.

  Near the middle of the building, Tameron stopped and instructed the scouts to get behind him. He made the clicking sound again and called out the name of one of the giraffes, Lofty. The giraffe lumbered over to a thin waterfall and poked his head through it. They heard a groaning sound, like a lever being pulled, and immediately the hard earth in front of the scouts be
gan to quake. Lofty plucked his head from the waterfall and gave it a shake, raining droplets all around. A rectangular piece of the ground, big enough to park a car on, broke free and started to rise. Steel poles were lifting it, one on each corner. When the section had risen about eight feet in the air, it halted, sending a thin shower of dirt and leaves over its edges. From one side of the new hole, a steep, dusty ramp disappeared into the darkness below.

  Starting down the ramp, Tameron waved the scouts along, saying, “Let’s go. You can hide in the Secret Zoo until the cops split.”

  The friends glanced at one another in hesitation. Then they followed Tameron down beneath Giraffic Jam.

  Chapter 41

  The Confrontation

  Beneath Giraffic Jam was a tunnel with four branches. The main passage was lined with ordinary bricks and was tall enough to accommodate the long necks of the giraffes. The opening to each branch was covered with a curtain, and metal plates above the curtains named the passages: METR-APE-OLIS, THE SECRET RHINORAMA, THE STRIP OF STRIPES, and THE SECRET GIRAFFIC JAM. Tameron hurried through the curtain leading to the Secret Giraffic Jam. As the scouts pushed through it, the curtain’s tassels danced around their feet.

  Inside the new tunnel, the ground inclined to a point of light. The scouts quickly walked the distance and emerged into the sector, their feet moving from the hard earth to the wooden planks of a deck.

  The Secret Giraffic Jam was a gigantic version of the Clarksville Zoo’s giraffe exhibit. Noah remembered Tameron explaining how a sector, during its creation, took on the characteristics of the exhibit connected to it. This seemed especially true of the Secret Giraffic Jam. The sector wasn’t wide—Noah could plainly see the blinking light marking the entrance into the City of Species about three hundred feet away. But what the sector lacked in width, it made up for in height. Through an endless vista of trees, walkways swerved and turned and dipped, like a tangle of roadways in a Dr. Seuss book. Autumn had brushed color across the magical heights, and leaves rained down and piled on everything—the walkways, the ground, even the branches. The giraffes, too numerous to count, paced in all directions on the winding decks, their powerful necks sweeping about. They reached their heads far over the rails, defeating the simple obstacle of distance to munch on leaves.