The Never War

by D. J. MacHale

  I couldn’t. But just the fact that I tried showed how desperate I was.

  I ran back into the room to see that Gunny had come up with a brilliant plan. A dangerous plan, but a brilliant one. He was pulling down the drapes that hung on either side of the balcony doors. With his pocketknife he cut a small tear on one end to get started, then ripped off a long strip of fabric. I knew instantly what he wanted to do. We were going to make a lifeline.

  “You keep cutting strips,” he ordered. “I’ll tie the knots.”

  I set to work with his knife, tearing off long strips of fabric. Gunny expertly knotted the ends together.

  “There’s another balcony below us, about thirty feet down,” Gunny explained. He then pulled on the fabric, testing its strength. “I’ll tie one end onto the railing up here, then lower myself down.”

  This was a plan. As good as any. But as I cut the pieces of fabric, I knew there was only one thing wrong with it.

  “This is gonna work, Gunny,” I said. “But you’re too heavy. This won’t hold you.”

  “It’ll have to,” Gunny said quickly. “Because I’m not sending you over the side.”

  We continued working for a few minutes, until Gunny had fashioned a rope that looked plenty long enough. I tugged on it. It was strong, but still had a little play. Gunny was six foot four and probably weighed 220 pounds. I was five foot five and weighed half that much.

  “Gunny, if you go, this’ll tear,” I said.

  Gunny tested the rope himself. I could tell by his expression he didn’t think it would hold his weight either.

  “I’m light,” I added. “It’ll hold me.”

  I didn’t wait for his response. I started tying one end around my chest and under my arms. I had to do it fast, not because I thought Gunny would stop me, but because I was afraid I’d chicken out if I thought too much about it. We were thirty floors up. My mind flashed on the horrible sight of Mr. Nasty Gangster falling through the air.

  Note to self: Stop thinking.

  “No, Pendragon, I can’t let you—”

  “We don’t have a whole lot of choices,” I interrupted. “Either I go, or we hang out here until the housekeeping staff finds us tomorrow morning.”

  Gunny looked at the floor. If there were any other way around this, he would have taken it. But he knew I was right.

  “Let’s do it,” I said, and carried the makeshift rope out on the balcony.

  Gunny tied the loose end securely around the balcony railing. He knew what he was doing. Maybe it was his army training. I trusted that his knots would hold. It was the drape material I wasn’t so sure about.

  “You’re in control,” he instructed. “Grab on to the rope near the railing, face the building, keep your feet against the wall and walk backwards. Let the rope move through your hands as you go down. I’ll handle the slack.”

  “I’ve done this,” I said. “It’s sort of like rappelling.”

  Uncle Press had taught me how to rock climb. It seemed like things kept popping up that Uncle Press had prepared me for. I always thought he took me on those great adventures because he was a fun uncle. I had no idea he was training me for life as a Traveler. Because we had gone on a rock-climbing trip when I was twelve, I knew how to rappel down the side of a sheer rock face. The only difference here was, I wasn’t secured by a solid climber’s rope. I was trusting my life to a raggy piece of drapery. Gulp.

  I sat up on the railing and swung my legs over. I made sure not to look down. I didn’t need to see how far I would fall if things went south, so to speak. So while pretending I was only a few feet up in the air, I carefully turned around. I stood with my toes on the balcony, holding on to the rail, looking back at Gunny. It all seemed so natural, except that he was standing on the safe side of the railing and my butt was dangling over midtown Manhattan.

  “Can of corn,” he said reassuringly. But his eyes gave him away. He was scared. Probably not as much as I was, though.

  Gunny then threaded the slack rope through the railing and pulled my end tight. As I lowered myself down, he would play out my end of the rope, keeping pressure off the railing knot. It was like being double-secured. At least, that’s what I told myself.

  I tested the strength of the cloth rope, nodded, and stepped down off the balcony. With my feet firmly planted on the wall, I began to walk down backward.

  I flashed on the old Batman TV show where those guys used to walk up the sides of buildings with their Bat ropes. That was idiotic. But not as idiotic as what I was doing now. I held the cloth rope tightly, and slowly slid my hands down it as I moved. The only tricky part came when I got to one of Gunny’s knots. They were too big to slip through my clenched hands, so I had to let go with one hand at a time and cross over below it. That was scary.

  I could hear the cloth rope straining under my weight. Obviously, this material wasn’t made to hold so much weight, because I kept hearing tiny little tearing sounds. They were faint, but they might as well have been exploding cherry bombs. If enough of those little tears got together, they’d make one big rip and, well, look out below.

  Just to make me even more nervous, I looked up to see that Gunny didn’t have enough drape left to hold on to. I wasn’t double-secured anymore.

  The whole trip only took a couple of minutes, though it felt like I was dangling from that building for a week. Finally I slid my right foot down another few inches and felt air. I had made it to the ceiling of the balcony below! I couldn’t see the balcony because it was cut in to the building, but I knew it was there. My foot told me so. I was almost home.

  That’s when the bad news came.

  No, the rope didn’t break. It wasn’t that bad. But it was close. I had another six feet to go before my feet would touch the railing of the balcony below, when I realized the worst: I had run out of rope. We made it too short! I dangled there, twenty-nine stories high over pavement, with the wind blowing and drops of rain beginning to fall…with nowhere to go.

  “It’s too short!” I called up to Gunny. “I can’t go any lower.”

  Gunny winced. “You sure?”

  “Uh, yeah.” It didn’t take a genius to figure this one out.

  “You’re going to have to climb back up,” Gunny called down.

  This was a disaster. We blew it. How could we have made such a simple mistake? I had to climb back up and figure out a Plan B. But as soon as I reached my hand farther up the rope, I felt it tear again. It wasn’t a little tear either. I must have jolted down an inch. The rope was going to go! If I tried to climb back up, I wouldn’t make it very far. I was trapped. There was no place to go but down. Way down.

  I then realized that I had one chance. It was horrifying to think of, but it was the only way. Without stopping to second guess, I grabbed higher up on the rope with one hand and pulled up to take some of my weight off the rope. I then began to untie the knot that secured the rope around my chest.

  “Pendragon, what are you doing?” Gunny shouted in horror.

  “I need more rope,” I called back. “This’ll give me another couple of feet.”

  It was a totally scary maneuver. If I could untie the knot, I could use the extra length of rope that was wrapped around my chest to lower myself down a few more feet. Hopefully that would get me low enough to touch my feet to the railing and swing into the balcony.

  Yeah, hopefully. It could also be suicide.

  I had to pull myself up with one hand, and untie the knot with the other. To make things worse, if that’s possible, the knot was now squeezed into a tiny, tight ball because my whole weight had been pulling on it.

  And it started to rain.

  The fabric was getting wet and slick. This was insane.

  So with one hand I pulled myself up; with the other hand I worked on the knot. It was really hard. After a few minutes my arm started to scream with pain from the stress. I wasn’t sure which was going to give out first, my arm or the rope. But I couldn’t rest. If I put my weight back on the ro
pe, the knot would pull tight and I’d have to start over.

  This was quickly looking like a very bad idea.

  After a few agonizing minutes, I managed to loosen up the knot. The next step was the scary one. My right arm was shot. I had to reach up and grab the rope with my left arm to give it a rest. I couldn’t let my full weight back on the rope now. The knot was too loose. If I let go, the only thing that would break my fall was the pavement.

  With a couple of quick tugs, I pulled the knot entirely free, then grabbed the rope with both hands. I was now hanging by my hands. My really tired hands. I then slipped down a few inches at a time, letting the slick rope slide through my hands. The pain was incredible. I was so tired.

  I checked to see how much of the rope was left and saw about a foot until the end. This was going to be close. Then, with only a few inches of rope left, I felt the railing with my toe. I was there!

  But I wasn’t safe yet. My arms were straight up over my head and I was still staring at building. I was so freakin’ close, but still not low enough to swing in. I was going to have to put my full weight on the rail, let go of the rope, and duck under the ceiling. Sounds easy, right? It wasn’t. It was totally awkward. Making it worse, the narrow rail was slick with rain.

  I eased myself down until my feet were resting on the rail. Man, it felt great to be on something solid again. There wasn’t much more than an inch of rope left, but that was okay. For the first time, I thought I was going to make it. I gingerly let go of the rope, putting all my weight on my feet. I then started to crouch down to duck under the ceiling and jump onto the balcony when…

  My feet slipped.

  It all went so fast that I’m not exactly sure what happened. Luckily, when my feet went off the rail, they slipped toward the balcony side, not toward air. That saved my life. But when I fell, I was so close to the rail that my head thumped against the hard, slick metal.

  Our escape plan had worked, but we weren’t any closer to getting out of there, because that head slam knocked me straight into dreamland.

  I found myself lying on a beach. It was the Point in Stony Brook. Best beach in the world. At least it was the best beach in Stony Brook. Mark, how many times did we ride our bikes there to hang out for hours, watching the girls? I can still picture that pink bikini Courtney got last summer. Courtney, hot suit. Yeah, I was lying in the sand at the Point, listening to the waves, kicking back, hanging.

  When I opened my eyes I expected to see you, Mark. Or Courtney, or any of the other kids from class, kicking it right along with me. Instead, I saw Dewey.

  His eyes were as big as baseballs as he stared down at me.

  “Pendragon!” he shouted, all nervous. “Are you alive?”

  I wasn’t sure. But dead people didn’t get headaches, so I figured I was still among the living. I slowly sat up and looked around. All thoughts of the beach at Stony Brook and Courtney’s pink bikini were long gone. Oh, well. Dewey’s face pretty much ended that. Instead, I saw that I was lying on the floor of the ballroom on the twenty-ninth floor of the hotel. It was the same ballroom where we saved Max Rose’s life. It was empty now, except for Dewey and me.

  “I was gonna call a doctor, but Gunny told me not to,” Dewey whined. “You want me to get one?”

  “No,” I said quickly. I probably needed one, but now wasn’t the time. “I’m fine. Where’s Gunny?”

  “Downstairs. He told me to wait with you till he got back. Did you really climb down that drapery?”

  It all came back to me—Saint Dane, being locked in the penthouse, Ludwig Zell, the trip down the rope, the fall. I really wished I were on that beach in Stony Brook.

  “One of the cooks found you lying here,” Dewey said. “But you were out cold. He saw the rope hanging down and found Gunny upstairs. Pendragon, there’s a dead body up there! Who is that? How did you two get locked in the penthouse?”

  “Long story,” I said. Then another thought hit me. “What time is it?”

  Dewey looked at his watch and said, “Almost three o’clock.”

  Yeow. If I wasn’t awake before, I was now. I had been out for hours! The Hindenburg was going to arrive in four hours and we were still in Manhattan!

  “I gotta get outta here,” I said as I tried to get up. But the pain shot through my head like a bolt of lightning. It pushed me right back down to the floor.

  “Don’t move,” Dewey said. “I’ll get you some water.” He ran off, leaving me alone.

  This was bad. Very bad. Where was Gunny? I forced myself to sit up, then pulled myself into a chair. I had to get my act together and down to New Jersey, or everything would be lost. The Hindenburg was going to land at 7:25. Gunny said it was a four-hour drive down to Lakehurst. Even if we left at that very minute, we still wouldn’t get down there until almost seven o’clock. That wouldn’t leave much time to figure a way to stop Spader and Max Rose.

  “We’re in trouble,” came a voice from behind me. It was Gunny. He jogged across the ballroom toward me.

  “I’ve been out for hours, Gunny! Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  “Because I was trying to find us a ride down to New Jersey,” was his answer.

  Good answer.

  “I didn’t find one,” he added.

  Ooh, bad answer.

  “What do you mean? What about Caplesmith’s car?”

  “I went to the fella who’s been fixing it. It’s in pieces all over the garage floor. He said it would take him half a day to put it back together.”

  “Then we’ll take the bus. Gunny, we gotta get down there.”

  “That’s not good,” Gunny answered. “The last bus going down that way today left at noon.”

  “What about a train?” I asked.

  “Still no good. Earliest we could get down there would be tomorrow morning.”

  “This is incredible!” I shouted, jumping up. Bad move. Another bolt of pain shot through my head. It didn’t stop my tirade though. “Three territories are going to crumble because we can’t get a ride?”

  “I’m sorry, Pendragon,” Gunny said. “Unless you know some way of flying down there, we’re out of luck.”

  I stopped short. My bruised brain raced. Gunny had said the magic word. Flying.

  “C’mon,” I said, and ran for the elevator. Gunny was right behind me. We blew right past Dewey, who was headed toward us with a glass of water.

  “Where you going?” he asked.

  I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him along. After all, he ran the elevator.

  Five minutes later we were standing in front of room 1515. I knocked and closed my eyes. I had no idea if she was still staying at the hotel, but this was our last hope. After a few agonizing seconds, the door opened and we stood facing Jinx Olsen.

  “Pendragon! Gunny! Here to say good-bye?” she exclaimed. “Come on in.” She walked back into her room, where I saw all of her clothes spread out on the bed. She was packing up her duffel bag.

  “You’re leaving?” I asked.

  “Just got the word,” she said. “This is it. End of the line. I am officially off active duty.” She said this like it was cheery news, but I knew it was eating her up. “I’m headed home to Maine. And you know what? I’m taking the train. Why not? Something different, right?”

  Jinx continued to pack. I looked at Gunny. He gave me a nod of encouragement. I wasn’t exactly sure what to say, but I had to think of something fast.

  “Jinx,” I began. “We need a favor.”

  “Whatever I can do, boys,” she answered.

  “Can you fly us somewhere?”

  Jinx stopped packing. She looked at me, as if it were a strange request, then sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “I told you, Pendragon, I’m grounded. No more joy rides.”

  “This isn’t a joy ride,” I said. I tried to be as convincing as possible. “We need to get down to Lakehurst, New Jersey.”

  “Lakehurst?” she said. “That’s where the dirigibles come in. The Hindenburg i
s due today.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “What’s so important? You want to be there with all the other lookey-loos to see her float in? To be honest, I think those blimps are a lot of hot air. Get it? Hot air.”

  I got it. I wasn’t laughing.

  “That’s not it,” I said seriously. “I don’t really know how to say this. It’s a long story and there’s no way you’d believe it. But what I’m going to tell you is the absolute truth. If we don’t get down there right away, I mean now, something horrible is going to happen that I can’t even begin to describe.”

  “Really?” she said with surprise and a touch of curiosity. “What is it?”

  “I can’t tell you. I know that sounds stupid, but it’s the truth. I’ll tell you this much, though, we’re asking you to fly the most important mission taken by any pilot, man or woman, ever. I’m not exaggerating.”

  “He’s telling you the truth, ma’am,” Gunny added.

  It was now up to Jinx. I want to say that it was my brilliant powers of persuasion that convinced her to take us. I want to say that I was smart enough to know she wanted to do something important with her flying and not just be a sideshow. I even want to say I used my Traveler mind powers to convince her. I want to say all those things, but none of them would be true.

  “To be honest, Pendragon,” she said, “you didn’t have to tell me all that other stuff. I was ready to go the second you asked me if I’d fly you somewhere.”

  I had to smile. Could Jinx be any cooler? “You aren’t worried about the Coast Guard?” I asked.

  “Nah,” she scoffed. “What are they going to do? Ground me? If I’ve gotta go, I’m goin’ out with a bang!”

  It was nearly an hour later when we found ourselves strapped into Jinx’s V-157 Schreck/Viking, ready for takeoff. I was in the front cockpit next to Jinx because Gunny was a much bigger guy than Spader. He needed the rear cockpit all to himself. The monster engine pounded away as we bounced over the swells of the Hudson River. The weather was still nasty, so the water was pretty choppy. My aching head throbbed each time we hit a swell. I was miserable, but had to gut it out. My bigger worry was that if the weather got any worse than this, I didn’t think we’d be able to take off. I looked to the sky and saw that there were still thunderstorms dancing around.