Cragbridge Hall, Volume 2: The Avatar Battle

by Morris, Chad

  The gorilla moved aside, his fingers . . . typing? Whoever controlled it must have just used their rings—though it looked very strange. A message came in on Abby’s rings. She saw that it also had been sent to Carol.

  It’s me, Rafa.

  “Thanks, Rafa,” Abby said over her shoulder as she continued toward the door. She felt better. If Muns somehow could get his men back into Cragbridge Hall and they tried to ambush their meeting, they would have to tangle with quite the opponent. A robot gorilla can do some damage.

  “Rafa,” Carol said, following Abby. “Remind me that I owe you something scary. Unless you teach me how to samba, or you tell me the secret to that healthy shine to your hair, then I’ll call it even. Really, a boy shouldn’t have prettier hair than most of the girls in this school. It isn’t fair. I’m referring to your human hair, of course, and not your gorilla hair. No offense.”

  Abby slid her key into the door and twisted it, sending the gears and levers into motion. Soon the massive door whirred open.

  “Since I technically wasn’t invited, I probably shouldn’t go in any further,” Carol said, staring at the giant door. The message had only come to Abby. Abby had a key. Carol did not. “I’ll just wait in the creepy dark hall with the gorilla.”

  “Though that sounds strange, it’s probably best,” Abby admitted. “Once I find out what this is all about, I’ll tell you . . . if I can.” She waved, twisted her hair into a ponytail, and descended down another ladder into another dark, twisting corridor. She wondered if Derick had also been invited. He didn’t have a key, but he had been instrumental in her efforts to get one. She hoped he would be there. She eventually heard Grandpa’s voice in the distance.

  Abby stepped into a giant room. In the middle was what looked like a massive metal tree, its limbs sprawling up into the ceiling: the original Bridge. The branches contained connections that wove through the floor of the school to hundreds of Bridge stations. Every student knew that the Bridge could portray logged and charted moments of history from any angle they chose. But they couldn’t go back further than four thousand years and no more recently than fifty years ago. And, of course, they could not interact with history. It was simply a faded image of what had happened. What most students didn’t know was that if three people with keys placed them in the original Bridge, they could enter history itself.

  Four people already stood in the room. No Derick. Abby wasn’t surprised by three of them—Grandpa and coaches Adonavich and Horne, her gym coaches from the last semester. She knew she could trust them. It was the fourth person Abby hadn’t expected: a tall, thin man with blondish white hair—Dr. Mackleprank. He had been her zoology teacher, but unlike Derick, she had no natural talent in the avatars. She had fallen down so many times as a squirrel monkey she was convinced she had real bruises.

  “Abby,” Grandpa greeted her. “Quickly.” He motioned for her to enter. “Muns has used another energy burst.”

  “Where . . . ,” Abby began to ask, but shook her head, “I mean when did he go in? Where is he in time?”

  • • •

  “Hold the line!” Derick heard an officer behind him call out. Derick bit the end off the package of gunpowder and poured it down the barrel. He noticed his hands were black and sooty. He was sure his face and arms were too—the signs of a black powder war.

  Another musket ball whizzed by him. In a simulator or not, he would never get used to it. He tried to steady his heart and his hands as he dropped the metal ball in the barrel and used the rod to push it down. After readying the spot on the gun where the spark would hit the powder, he lifted his gun to aim. The other soldiers could shoot nearly three times in a minute. Derick was grateful to get off a shot and be halfway into loading the second in the same amount of time.

  A man to his left cursed and fell to the ground clutching his arm. Someone to his right seemed to be mumbling a prayer. Derick was surprised he noticed it, surprised his brain even worked under the circumstances. How long would he have to endure this?

  Derick thought of the others meeting in the basement right now. They could have to go into the past and keep Muns from altering it. Muns might even be trying to change something like the Civil War, and that would have ramifications to billions of people. He needed a key. He needed to be able to help.

  A musket ball thudded as it pierced a tree several feet away. It sounded so flat and powerful, haunting and threatening. Derick ducked behind the small rock wall and fished another packet of gunpowder out of his satchel. He rose and shot again, but most of the soldiers had retreated and the rest were quickly following.

  Did they do it? Had they won? Derick waited for celebration. Nothing. “They’ll be back,” another soldier said.

  Derick’s heart sank. He couldn’t take much more. The shooting. The death. Being in a war was brutal, so much more difficult than just reading about it. He wanted to back out, to be done, but he knew he couldn’t. He couldn’t fail.

  Resolving to be ready, he searched for more powder. Nothing. He must have fired nearly sixty times and apparently that was all that he had. As he surveyed the other soldiers, he noticed many of them in the same predicament.

  Some of the leaders were gathered behind him. One man had a long bushy mustache, long overdue for a trim, and Derick thought he overheard someone call him Chamberlain. Derick couldn’t make out most of it, but when he casually wandered back a few feet, he heard phrases like “no more ammunition,” “tired,” “wounded,” and “pull back.”

  Then Chamberlain spoke. “No. We hold,” he commanded. “We are the extreme left flank.” If they retreated, the other army could creep around the rest of the North’s army and attack it from behind. The results would be disastrous.

  Derick heard commotion down the hill. He saw glimpses of gray. They were coming. Then he heard a word that sent shivers down his back, a word from Chamberlain commanding his men to action. “Bayonets!” Derick had noticed a bayonet blade hooked at the gun’s side. In war vids, when fights got to close quarters, soldiers would hook the blade onto the front of the gun and use it like a combination of a spear and a sword.

  A soldier came to their front. “Fasten bayonets, men. We’re going to charge.”

  What? Charge down the hill when they didn’t have ammo? Sure, they’d have their bayonets on their guns, but the grays had bullets. Hadn’t they ever heard that you’re not supposed to bring a knife to a gunfight? Just because the knives are bigger doesn’t make much difference. And the other army outnumbered them. This was crazy—this was suicide!

  He watched closely as the solider next to him placed his bayonet at the front of his gun and fastened it down. Was he shaking? Derick couldn’t blame him.

  He attached his own bayonet the best he could, copying the other man. They had to do this. They had to defend the line and protect the far left flank to keep the enemy from getting behind them. But did all these men die? Was Derick about to? He knew he wouldn’t really die, but he would still feel it. Was he willing to do that? He watched as soldier after soldier stood at the ready. They faced death for real. There was no simulator. There would be no waking up safe for them. Could he face death with them?

  A coronet blasted, loud and brassy. It was time.

  6

  The Charge

  We need to use the keys in the Bridge,” Grandpa said, his face stern. As usual, he wore his blazer with the Cragbridge Hall crest.

  “How do we know he used another burst?” Abby asked. The thought sent chills through her. Though she didn’t know exactly how an energy burst worked, last semester Abby learned what Muns could do with one. He had figured out that a burst of highly focused energy could, for a few short seconds, make a hole in the shield Grandpa had invented between the present and the past. It was the same shield the keys allowed them to bypass. With the burst, Muns had a quick window of opportunity to travel into history—or send someone else.

  “Because of the substantial amount of energy it takes, he must store enoug
h to power the burst,” Grandpa explained. “That’s probably why he has taken so long to act. Some friends and I have devised some equipment to register such a large amount of energy. There was another burst nearly ten minutes ago.”

  Amazing. Abby knew her grandpa had been busy while she was studying, writing papers, and preparing for tests, but she hadn’t known that he had been working on equipment to detect energy bursts.

  Grandpa’s old but agile hands worked the Bridge. “We must be quick,” he said. In the far half of the room a faded image began to form. Two men walked down a sidewalk between a tall brick building and a road. The building was several stories tall, with rounded windows on top and pillars supporting decorative eaves. The men both wore suits, one dark with a matching hat, the other a nearly white coat and dark pants. One of the men carried a dark brown leather suitcase.

  “This is Germany in early May, 1937,” Grandpa explained. Then he sped up the image. The two men walked down the street and turned. Then they disappeared. “This is the moment Muns’s men are in time.” Grandpa rewound the image and they appeared again. “They have not changed anything yet. Coming in through a burst is disorienting, so it buys us some time.”

  Grandpa cleared his throat. “The men just spent what would be thousands of dollars today to book passage on the Hindenburg. Now, like all the other passengers, they are probably going into town to buy dinner before the flight, and it is our chance to stop them.”

  “What’s the Hindenburg?” Abby asked.

  Grandpa worked the controls at the console of the Bridge. In a moment, the scene before them faded and another appeared. What looked like a magnificent blimp floated in the air across the room. It was massive, several football fields in length, like an ocean liner in the sky. It glided over a large city with crowded streets of people gazing up at the amazing flying spectacle, taking pictures.

  A question formed in Abby’s mind, but she sensed now was not the time to ask.

  “This blimp, or dirigible, is the Hindenburg,” Grandpa said. The wind shifted, and the large vessel slewed closer to what appeared to be a giant tower. Another giant gust hit and the blimp began to try to turn around. Abby marveled at the dirigible. “As our history now stands, the end of this flight of the Hindenburg destroyed dirigible travel forever,” Grandpa said.

  In a flash, the massive blimp burst into flames.

  Abby couldn’t tell what started the fire, but it spread in a hurry. The back half of the dirigible exploded in flame and smoke. Gasps turned into screams. The massive craft sunk as the blazes engulfed it.

  “It was a terrible tragedy,” Grandpa said. “The Titanic of the sky.”

  Abby swallowed hard. That was fitting—the kind of detail Muns would use in his revenge. Abby, Derick, and the others had foiled Muns’s last attempt on the Titanic, so now he was going to alter the fate of the Titanic of the sky.

  “I believe these intruders in the past are going to try and stop it.” Grandpa raised his hand. “Though that may be appealing on the surface, it could have disastrous consequences. He may prevent one terror, but that act could cause many more. It may change everything from then until now. Some people would survive that did not survive in our current history. Those people would interact with others, changing what is now our past. They could marry, which would change the families we now have. They could cause new accidents; their children could do the same. People who exist now might disappear because their parents never married or died in the alternate history. This could change entire countries. Leaders may never be born. It could change even the course of our reality.” He waved his cane emphatically. “We must stop Muns before he changes the past and sends us all on a path to destruction.”

  • • •

  Could he do this? Could he charge an enemy when he didn’t have any ammunition? Derick looked around at the men and boys with him. Would they? Could they face almost certain death?

  Someone yelled, intense and shrill. Soon more battle cries from his regiment blended into one cacophonous roar. They held their guns firmly and began to charge down the hill. Soldier after soldier passed Derick. They were risking it all. Was it this important that the United States stay together? If they didn’t stay together, would the slaves be freed in all the states? Would all the states progress as they had? Would they then be able to stand against others in world wars? Derick wasn’t sure of all the answers, but he knew this moment was important. But was it important enough to die for? He wasn’t sure what reasons each of these men had, but they acted. They bravely rushed their enemy.

  Derick looked at his legs, willing them to move. He knew this was a simulation, yet he didn’t want to feel the bullets, the pain. It was not his life on the line, but he still wavered.

  Something caught his attention ahead—a sword flashing. A man in a uniform much like Derick’s was charging down the hillside. He was some sort of leader, but Derick didn’t know his name. Doubt and wonder swirled through Derick’s mind as the man raced a good ten paces ahead of all his men. He would be the first to meet the enemy. He would be the prime target. Yet he charged on.

  Derick had to have the same character, the same heart as these men if he was going to pass the test. He had to truly be willing to die.

  Derick searched himself. He had to fight against a different enemy, one who would change history, maybe even destroy it all. He had to gain his key, his weapon, but first he would have to be willing to charge down a hill almost without one.

  Derick groaned, letting the deep sound grow into a yell. He leaned forward and began to speed down the hill. He gained momentum, rushing down the mountainside with his musket extended in front of him, a dirty bayonet on its tip.

  He leapt over a tree root and shifted to avoid a patch of uneven ground. He pushed himself harder, trying to catch up to the men who bravely charged in front of him. He tried not to imagine himself—and the whole line of men with him—gunned down as they tried to do something brave.

  Adrenaline pulsed through him. He felt courageous.

  Until he saw the enemy with their guns raised.

  • • •

  Abby imagined what life might be like if the Hindenburg hadn’t caught on fire. Would they have modern dirigibles? She couldn’t help but wish to ride in one. But as for Grandpa’s arguments, she had heard them before—and so had the coaches. It was hard to swallow at first, but she understood. Grandpa must have been giving the speech for Mackleprank.

  “Plus,” Grandpa continued, “we need tragedies. They teach us. We learn from them. Without tragedies, our hearts do not commit to avoid future ones. Without tragedies, many of our hearts would not turn to others, open up to them. And without tragedies, we do not have heroes, for they are not formed without great conflicts. For example,” Grandpa fast-forwarded the image, “I believe there are some heroes in this very event.” The flaming blimp approached a spot to land and anchor. In the middle of all the chaos, a boy ran from his safety on the ground into the flames, trying to save the others.

  Abby wondered if she could run into a fire to help.

  “I do not know his name. I haven’t had time to study this episode in history, but I remember his courage.”

  “Harry J. King,” Coach Horne said, his fingers moving, looking up the information on his rings. “He was a baggage handler.”

  “Thank you,” Grandpa said to the coach. “He deserves to be remembered.” He turned back to everyone. “This is what I propose, though it will require your trust. Abby, Coach Adonavich, and I will turn our keys. Then we will send Dr. Mackleprank in to retrieve the two men and bring them back out through the Bridge.”

  Send in Dr. Mackleprank? That wasn’t what Abby was expecting.

  “No disrespect to Mackleprank,” Coach Horne said, “but shouldn’t Coach Adonavich and I go in as well? That way we guarantee we get it done.” That made sense. Especially since Coach Horne was a former world champion weight lifter and Coach Adonavich had been an Olympic gymnast.

  “You are
still recovering from the last Bridge incident,” Coach Adonavich said, motioning toward Coach Horne’s chest and leg, where he had taken two bullets at the beginning of the school year. “I’ll join Dr. Mackleprank.”

  “I hoped both of you would be willing to stand by if we needed your physical prowess,” Grandpa said to the two coaches. “However, I am going to ask you to wait and only cross into the past if necessary. The fewer people we send means the smaller chance of doing irreparable harm. I think we’ll find that Dr. Mackleprank is aptly suited for the task. Though he does not have a key, I trust him completely and have invited him here precisely for this chore.” He nodded in the doctor’s direction.

  Dr. Mackleprank looked at Grandpa, his eyes wide. Abby thought he looked nervous. “I’m more than willing, but are you sure?”

  “Yes,” said Grandpa. “If anything goes wrong we will send the two coaches in after you.” He looked over at the coaches for confirmation. They nodded.

  “If I can get in okay, we should be fine,” Dr. Mackleprank said.

  Abby wasn’t sure what that meant. Did he doubt that he could actually go back in time? She didn’t blame him; this was all new to him. She might wonder too if she hadn’t already seen—and done—it. She remembered crossing over, the heat and then the chill. She remembered the terror she faced. She knew firsthand that it worked.

  “I ask you to please trust me,” Grandpa said. “That includes Dr. Mackleprank.”

  “But if I am manning the keys,” Coach Adonavich said, “I will be several steps away from entering the past if Dr. Mackleprank needs me.”

  “True,” Grandpa admitted. “I would feel much better if you didn’t have to worry about the keys and could simply stand ready to enter the past if necessary. It would be ideal if we had one more person here with a key.”

  • • •

  Derick’s voice joined the shrill yell. More gunfire from the enemy.