Kingdom Keepers Boxed Set

by Ridley Pearson

  Wayne would have been proud.

  “We’ll meet after school. We’ve got to find Wayne.”

  He raised his right hand. In it was the black remote with the small button at its center.

  “Ready?” he said.

  The others nodded.

  He pushed the button.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Kingdom Keepers novels depend on a team, in part because the research conducted inside the Parks, and also about the Parks, is both complex and time-consuming, and ultimately essential to the story.

  First, I want to thank my co-writer (from other novels), Dave Barry, who, during a car ride to Orlando’s airport made suggestions to the outline that formed and framed the book, forever changing it. He jokes how I’m the “plot guy” in our partnership, but for once he is “making this up.” He set the clock in the book ticking and gave me one of the most important twists. Thanks.

  The real dedication of the book should probably be to Alex Wright, a Disney Imagineer, a man with tireless patience, who has endured (and I am not making this up!) hundreds of e-mails where I picked his brain for details. Alex also hosted several behind-the-scene tours for me in Animal Kingdom and introduced me to:

  Dr. Joseph Soltis—Wildlife Tracking Center

  Dr. Don Neiffer—Veterinary Hospital

  Debbie Weber—Animal Nutrition Center

  Matt Hohne—Animal Barns

  Jason Surrell—Disney Imagineer (and AK tour host/insider)

  I’d also like to thank my niece, Blair M. Daverman, for filling in some blanks about the sport of lacrosse.

  My wife, Marcelle, along with Laurel and David Walters, as always, copyedited the various drafts. And Tanner Walters, who in sixth grade reads more than I do, gave me an early read and caught a bunch of problems. So did my daughter Paige. And thanks to daughter Storey for reading KK1 and telling me what she liked!

  Special gratitude to Nandy Litzinger, my office manager; Wendy Lefkon, Disney editor; Amy Berkower, agent; Matthew Snyder, film agent; and Jennifer Levine, Disney publicist.

  It obviously takes a village.

  —Ridley Pearson

  January 2008

  St. Louis, Missouri

  The Kingdom Keepers series is dedicated to Storey and Paige, for helping me see the world through their eyes….

  FINN WHITMAN RAN HARD, then all the harder still, Donnie Maybeck by his side and keeping up. By day, Tom Sawyer Island in the Magic Kingdom was an intriguing tangle of trees and bushes interrupted by meandering pathways. By night, it was something altogether different.

  Especially with four insanely angry, sword-carrying pirates bearing down on you, followed closely by an alien with a genetic malfunction that posed like Elvis Presley and looked slightly like a cross between a koala bear and a cuddly dog.

  The guys in the torn T-shirts and calf-length pants had leaped from the shadows surrounding Pirates of the Caribbean—the park having been closed for nearly three hours—immediately in pursuit. Stitch, on the other hand, had appeared out of nowhere.

  Finn made the mistake of glancing back at them.

  “Don’t look back!” Maybeck called out sharply. “Your face, your skin is like a flashlight. You’ll give us away! Believe me, Whitman, this is when it pays to be yours truly.”

  Maybeck thought of himself as God’s answer to everything, and wasn’t afraid to share that opinion. If given half a chance, he would make the point that his great-grandparents had been slaves, and his grandparents sharecroppers on Florida sugarcane plantations; he was fiercely proud of his African American heritage and of the fact that his family were some of the original Floridians, instead of being descendants of snowbird retirees, like Finn and so many of his friends—and their fellow DHIs.

  DHI stood for Disney Host Interactive, or Daylight Holographic Image, depending on who you asked. There were five DHIs, including Finn and Maybeck—holograms of teenage hosts that, by day, acted as guides to guests at the Magic Kingdom. (The other three, Philby, Willa, and Charlene, were by now supposed to be awaiting the two boys in the Indian Village across the water from Tom Sawyer Island.)

  There was a glitch in the software that projected the holograms in the park: when any of the five teens who’d originally modeled for the DHIs went to sleep at night, they would wake up, not as themselves, but as their holograms, inside the Magic Kingdom. As it turned out this was no glitch—an old guy, a Disney Imagineer named Wayne, had intentionally made this “crossover” possible by rewriting the projection computer code. He’d done this because he’d needed the help of the DHIs to solve a riddle left behind by Walt Disney years before.

  But tonight was different: the kids had gone to sleep; they’d crossed over, becoming their DHIs inside the Magic Kingdom at night—something they were used to by now. They had left a special fob with a button, like a garage door opener, inside a teepee, to ensure that they could all simultaneously cross back over, retreating into their sleeping bodies in their homes. That was all pretty much the same as usual; what made it different was why they were here in the first place.

  Wayne was missing.

  He’d been missing for nearly three weeks, ever since one very long day inside Disney’s Animal Kingdom where the teens had battled the wicked fairy Maleficent and the gargoyle beast Chernabog.

  It was unacceptable to leave Wayne missing. He was the last Imagineer alive who’d known Walt Disney personally, who’d known Walt’s plans and intentions for the parks and characters. Wayne had created their ability to cross over. He was their mentor and their leader in trying to fight Maleficent and her ambitious plans.

  Wayne had explained it all to Finn, what seemed like a long time ago now.

  “You know the movie Toy Story?” Wayne had asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Andy’s toys come alive when he leaves the room.”

  “I know,” Finn had said.

  “Well, that wasn’t exactly a new idea around here. Walt designed it so that when the last of the humans—the guests, the cast members, the cleaners, maintenance personnel, even the security guys—leave the Magic Kingdom, the characters get to have it all to themselves.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I’m serious,” Wayne had said. “We began to suspect this as odd things started happening, like finding equipment moved or an Audio-Animatronics in a different position than it had been left in the night before. Strange, unexplainable events. But Walt had wanted it this way, and we left it alone. That is…until the trouble began. Even now, security rarely patrols the parks at night, and when they do, the good characters are left alone to enjoy their freedom as Walt wanted.”

  The good characters, Finn thought.

  He would later discover that Wayne was telling the truth, but when he’d first heard the story, he’d thought the guy was nuts. He hadn’t believed a word. Having been raised to be polite, he kept quiet and didn’t challenge the old man.

  “I had a pet monkey when I was a child,” Wayne said. “My mother gave it to me for my thirteenth birthday.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “A terrific pet, a monkey. A real friend. Except the more freedom I gave him, the more freedom he wanted. The more freedom he took. I eventually had to give him back to the store that had sold him to us because he would no longer get back into his cage at night. He couldn’t give up his newly found freedom.

  “Well, the same thing has happened to the characters,” he continued. “Turns out some of them like having the park all to themselves. Mostly the villains, as it so happens. They enjoy bossing around the likeable characters, sabotaging the more popular rides, and generally making trouble. We think a group of them—we’re not exactly sure who all of them are—have decided to drive the good characters out, to take over the park and make it a dark, evil place. The plan seems to be a simple one—if they can scare away the good guys, only the villains will be left. Eventually only people attracted by evil will come. That’s why we call them the Overtakers. Their mission
is to change the park forever.”

  Wayne had studied Finn’s face to see how much, if any of this, Finn believed. He couldn’t read him.

  “We had it wrong for the longest time,” Wayne said. “We thought it was about them turning it into a ‘dark park’—a place where, instead of being magical and happy, it would be villainous and dark. We’re no longer certain that’s the case. We now think instead they want the parks—maybe all the Disney properties—for themselves. The more playgrounds, the better.”

  Finn remembered the day clearly, remembered how he’d felt about the idea of losing Disney World, Animal Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios. As DHIs—nonhuman holograms—he and the four others could infiltrate the park at night, making efforts to spy on and bring down the Overtakers. This had been Wayne’s grand scheme, his big plan in making the kids DHIs in the first place. Their most recent effort had been in the Animal Kingdom. They’d managed to save a friend from the Overtakers. But only Wayne saw the bigger picture. Only Wayne fully understood any of it.

  They had to find him.

  This was their fifth night searching the Magic Kingdom; their last now that they’d been spotted by the pirates and Stitch, now that all the Overtakers under Maleficent would be looking to…eliminate them. Or at least to trap their DHIs, a situation that left their sleeping bodies back in their parents’ homes unable to wake up. They called the condition the Syndrome—short for Sleeping Beauty Syndrome. Maybeck had experienced it once. So had Willa and Philby, briefly, in the Animal Kingdom. The Syndrome was nothing to mess with.

  “Note to self,” Finn said, intending it for Maybeck, “we are glowing bodies of light running through the dark jungle. You really think my face is going to give us away?”

  Of the five DHIs, Finn had the most control over his crossed-over state as a hologram. The four others existed in a kind of suspended state when crossed over: half DHI, half human kid, susceptible to getting hurt by accident or at the hands of others.

  Finn had learned with Wayne’s guidance to separate himself from fear, from all sensation—touch, sound, taste, smell, sight—and in doing so to make himself pure light, a stream of energy, a hologram just like his DHI that Disney used as the park guide. He couldn’t maintain this pure state for long—a minute or two at most. But he liked to rub his skill in Maybeck’s face.

  Finn ran right through three palm trees, not bothering to get out of their way. Maybeck weaved and bobbed, avoiding collision.

  “Show-off!” Maybeck said.

  “Elitist!” Finn fired back. His body passed transparently through a huge rock that Maybeck had to scramble over.

  “Know-it-all!” Maybeck said.

  “Eye candy!” Finn said. Maybeck was popular with the girls at school.

  They both heard the footfalls at once: the pirates had closed the distance and were only a matter of yards behind them now.

  “We should continue this later,” Maybeck said.

  “Agreed.”

  “Right now we need something resembling a plan.”

  “I have one,” Finn said. “Do you?”

  They continued running, Finn out of breath, Maybeck not winded at all.

  “That would be no,” Maybeck said.

  “All right then.”

  “All right then, what?”

  “We’ll go with my plan,” Finn said proudly.

  “Only if you have a plan in the next five seconds,” Maybeck countered.

  At that instant, Finn felt a burning sensation on his arm. He didn’t really have much of a plan, and Maybeck’s reliance on him had taken him out of his pure holographic state. He wasn’t glowing as brightly. He was part human again.

  He kept running.

  “Dude,” Maybeck said. “Your arm is like, gushing blood.”

  Finn looked down. He’d been caught by the tip of a pirate’s sword. It was a nasty cut, but he wouldn’t have called it “gushing.”

  Whoosh! Whoosh! Finn heard the sword slicing the air just behind him.

  “Slowpoke!” Maybeck chided. Maybeck ducked to his right and went down onto his hands and knees, tumbling over. He tripped up three of the pirates, sending them flying. He jumped to his feet and caught back up to Finn.

  “You do make yourself handy,” Finn said.

  “What are friends for?” Maybeck asked.

  “Here’s the plan…” Finn said at last. “How are you at swimming underwater?”

  AT FIRST, FINN ASSUMED THE alligator was a Disney prop. But then a flicker of doubt crossed his mind: Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were Mark Twain Mississippi River characters. Alligators and the Mississippi River didn’t fit.

  Swiss Family Robinson, maybe. Or the Jungle Cruise. The doubt—the fear—made him less DHI and more human, less pure light and more flesh and blood. Swimming underwater, glowing slightly, his eyes wide open, with Maybeck swimming to his left, Finn came to a major realization: the alligator was for real. It was swimming right at them, its mouth wide open.

  He didn’t know much about alligators, but this one looked hungry. And big.

  Finn reached over, grabbed Maybeck by the hand, and pulled him lower. The alligator misjudged and swam above them. It turned with a flick of its massive tail and came at them again.

  At that same instant, the pirates or Stitch must have stepped into the river water that surrounded Tom Sawyer Island. A splashing sound was familiar to any alligator—it often signaled an animal’s arrival at the water’s edge for a drink. To an alligator that sound meant a chance at a meal, and for this particular alligator the instinct proved too strong to resist. Only a foot or two from being able to bite off Maybeck’s feet, the beast reversed course with another fierce lash of its tail and headed for shore.

  As Finn and Maybeck scrambled up the muddy bank on the far side, winded and spitting out river water, there came a cry of terror from across the way: one of the pirates had nearly lost his leg to the alligator. He and the others and Stitch were in full retreat, running as fast as they could in the opposite direction.

  “You’re late,” Philby said. Philby was maybe the biggest techno-geek Finn had ever met, but he looked more like a soccer player than a nerd. Finn supposed that all the DHI models had been chosen for their “average” looks, their “all-American” qualities; all but Charlene, who was anything but average. She stood just behind Philby in front of one of the teepees, and looked more like a teenage movie star. She had blond hair and a cheerleader’s body, but she didn’t fit the stereotype of what all that implied. She was smart and athletic, cautious and curious.

  “We were worried about you,” she said. She pointed across the river. “Looks like for good reason.”

  “Yeah,” Finn said, “you might say we were delayed.”

  “You might say the pirates were waiting for us,” Maybeck said. “Waiting to grab us. To trap us in the Syndrome. They chased us onto the island and Whitman figured a way off, but it was close.”

  “Waiting,” Philby said, “as if they knew you were coming?”

  “That’s the way I read it,” Finn admitted. “Someone had spotted us in the park and alerted the pirates. Maybeck’s right: it was a close call.”

  “Come on!” Charlene said. “Before they come back.”

  The way the DHIs crossed over into the park was to go to sleep in their beds at home. Once asleep, they “woke up” inside the Magic Kingdom; but that meant that whatever they wore to sleep was what they were wearing when they appeared as DHIs in the park. Knowing this, Finn always dressed in normal clothes before going to bed. He pulled the covers up so his mother didn’t see what he was wearing as she said good-night. Charlene, on the other hand, had a mother who insisted on rubbing her back and talking to her each night before bed, so Charlene always arrived in the park wearing a nightgown, as she wore tonight. The boys had a hard time keeping their eyes off her.

  Willa, on the other hand, who looked Native American or Asian with her hooded, inquisitive eyes and dark braided hair, wore cargo pants and a T-shirt tha
t read: BITE ME. On the back it had the picture of a shark—some kind of promotion for a seafood restaurant.

  Once inside the nearest of the six teepees, the Kingdom Keepers were in an electronic shadow, an area where the DHI projection system could not reach. They became invisible once they moved a few feet from the teepee’s door. Only impressions in the sand showed where any of them were sitting. Though their DHI projections sometimes did not project in certain locations, they remained in the park, just as when light is showered onto a shadow, the shadow disappears but the object that was casting the shadow remains. In projection shadow the DHIs could still touch, feel, talk, smell, and hear; they left footprints. Invisible to the eye, they were not beyond detection, and therefore had to be careful. Now inside the teepee, their four voices rang out from the darkness. To anyone looking inside, it would have appeared that no one was there. The only thing that seemed out of place was a small black plastic fob that looked like a garage door opener, hanging from a nail in a pole by the teepee’s open door.

  Philby remained as a lookout somewhere outside the teepee. This, because they’d had unwanted visitors before.

  “So? What now?” Willa asked. “I mean we’ve looked for Wayne everywhere and I just don’t think he’s here in MK.”

  “If he is here,” Charlene said, “we’re not going to find him. I agree with Willa.”

  “We can’t give up,” Finn said.

  “That was a trap tonight, Whitman,” Maybeck said. “You and I…we walked into it. We can’t be hanging around MK anymore. They’re onto us.”

  “I’d like to disagree with you,” Finn said, “but I can’t. I say we move on to the Animal Kingdom.”

  “But our DHIs aren’t set up there, right?” Charlene said. There had been a time when Charlene had understood little of the technology that allowed them to cross over and become DHIs by night inside the park. But now she spoke as the expert they all had become.

  “Correct,” Finn said. “If we look for him inside AK, then it has to be during the day, and we have to go as ourselves.”