by Lisa McMann
“I know, I know. It’s just so … dramatically different. I expected I’d be able to stay upright with maybe a tail, claws, and some teeth. Not this.”
“Well, Dr. Jakande can take a look at that when we get back. For now, let’s see what you can do in this mode,” said Charlie, anxious to keep working on their plan to clear the roadway. She walked over to a car that was blocking the street. Its windows and tires were blown out and the interior was destroyed by the elements. She caught sight of the rats again and hastily clicked off her viper ability—better to forget they were there. Then, putting all her strength into it, she picked up one side of the car and rolled it. And rolled it. And rolled it.
Maria joined her in alligator mode for one last heave onto the side of the road. Mac, wearing his pangolin suit, used his claws to break a huge tree trunk into more manageable pieces.
They worked until they were exhausted, but it hardly looked like they’d done anything—that’s how bad it was. But they were determined to do everything they could to open up that road so that the people living up in the mountains could get through once more.
“This kind of feels like how things were when we first discovered Charlie had abilities,” said Maria, wiping the sweat off her warty alligator brow. “Like when she saved those people from the burning house.”
Mac smiled, remembering. “That was really cool,” he said. “And this is even better.”
“Like old times,” said Charlie. “Helping people in the neighborhood. It’s so much more fun than having to fight bad guys.”
CHAPTER 26
A Change of Plans
By the end of the second night, Maria, Mac, and Charlie had cleared enough to be noticed by people driving by. It put them in a tough spot, because during the third day while they cleaned up Yolanda’s neighborhood, people were talking about it. They speculated about why there were no big machines sitting there to haul off the stuff, and wondered if it was the work of someone other than the government contractors who were in various other parts of the island. The kids weren’t quite sure what to do when people talked about checking things out at night.
“Charlie can see them coming, at least,” Mac muttered to the girls.
“Maybe we should try to start from the top end of the road instead,” said Maria. “And work our way down, saving the stuff nearest the intersection for our last night so we don’t get caught in the act.”
“Easy for a monkey and a gecko to climb over all the stuff,” said Mac. He paused, thinking. “I wonder if my basilisk lizard might be useful for that too.”
“With feet like that, how can you go wrong?” said Charlie. “I think we should try it. We don’t want to be discovered because then we can’t work.”
As it turned out, things took a turn for the worse in an unexpected way. That night they headed out to clear more stuff away. They climbed over fallen trees, cars, and debris, only to discover a big open area up ahead. At first, they were glad to see it—less wreckage to clean up. But when they moved closer and shined their lights on it, they realized it wasn’t just an open space. The road had been totally washed away. There was a huge chasm, wide at the top and narrowing as it went down, with a river at the bottom. There was no way to get to the other side.
“Now what?” asked Charlie, her heart sinking. Had everything they’d done so far been for nothing? Or was there a way to get across?
The three friends thought about all of their various abilities and how they could use them in this situation. “I could climb down the rock face using my gecko ability,” said Charlie, peering down the chasm. “But I don’t think Maria’s monkey would be able to—there aren’t any handholds. And I’m not sure I can cross that river. We don’t know how deep it is.”
“If you were able to carry us down,” said Maria, “Mac and I can both cross the river now.”
“Yeah, but then how would we climb up the other side?” asked Mac. “We’d need Charlie for that, too.”
“That’s too dangerous for her,” said Maria, “especially in the dark. We can’t risk it.”
“Maybe if we work together,” Mac mused, “Maria and I could get you across. You could step on Maria’s alligator back with one foot and I could help you as I run across the water with my basilisk lizard suit… .”
“That sounds disastrous,” said Maria. “I mean, neither one of us has had the chance to try out our water abilities yet. We’re not sure how they work exactly.”
Charlie was not enthusiastic about the prospect. “There are too many things that could go wrong. Besides, what are we going to do once we get over there? If we’re going to try to bring food and supplies, we have to think of how to carry all of that stuff, too. I mean, I’m strong enough, but …” She imagined trying to balance dozens of bags of groceries while trying to get across the gorge.
“The people up there need help,” said Maria, tears springing to her eyes. “Nobody is coming! And now we can’t get there either.”
“Maybe I can throw things across,” suggested Charlie. “Or use a tree like a giant pole to put things on the other side?”
“How does that help if nobody can get to it from the other side?” Maria pointed out.
“Can Abu Yolanda call them?” asked Mac.
“No electricity up there. No phones,” Maria reminded him.
Mac sagged.
“We have to get to them,” said Charlie, determined. “Somehow. We have the powers. We just have to figure out how to use them for this.”
“Hey, Charlie,” said Mac after a moment. “You mentioned using a tree like a pole. But what if you just put a tree across to make a bridge?”
Charlie stared at him. “Duh,” she said. “Why didn’t I think of that? Let’s try it.” She went for the longest uprooted tree she could find and brought it over, then held on to one end and tried laying it across. But the chasm was too wide and the tree wouldn’t reach the other side.
“How close are we?” asked Charlie.
Mac trained his flashlight on the other side as Charlie held the tree.
“Not far,” said Mac. “So close it’s frustrating.”
“The chasm narrows,” said Maria. Her face lit up as an idea formed. “Try setting the tree in and see if it catches. Maybe we can wedge it in there a few feet down.”
Charlie bent down, back straining as she tried to keep the tree as horizontal as possible. But it still didn’t catch.
“You’re so close!” said Maria. “Drop it!”
Charlie dropped the tree and it caught several feet below them, making a slightly uneven bridge to the other side. They peered over the cliff at it.
Maria held the light up. “Well,” she said, “I wouldn’t walk on it. But that’s something.”
“Yep,” said Charlie. “Still too dangerous.” Charlie’s night vision made the log shimmer a silvery color. “We don’t know if it’ll hold.”
They sat there unsure what to do.
“What if I put more trees next to the first one?” said Charlie. “Once we have a base of tree trunks, we can pile more trees and even other stuff on top. That’ll help it wedge in there even more solidly. And we’ll build a bridge.”
“Yes!” Mac exclaimed. “A bridge! Then we can walk over, clear the road on that side, and then bring some supplies.”
“And let the people up there know they can get through,” said Maria. “That’s it! Everybody move—we don’t have any time to waste.”
Even though she was completely exhausted, Charlie looked forward to morning, when she and her friends could work with Yolanda’s neighbors again. She loved being part of a community. Everyone helping one another. Friends, strangers, all trusting one another.
Nobody suspected anyone of being there for the wrong reason. Nobody tried to take advantage of another person’s weakness. Not one of them was there to compete. They were all there to help. To show love and solidarity and goodness during a time of disaster.
It made Charlie think a lot about how much suspi
cion she had in her life at home. How she often had to weigh people’s motives, or expect the worst from them instead of the best, like here. It made her very thoughtful. She liked it better this way.
She also liked their secret plan to help. The bridge took them two nights to build. Charlie jammed uprooted trees into the chasm in a line while Maria, in alligator mode, moved more debris to the edge for Charlie to layer on top of the tree base. Mac used his pangolin claws to break an enormous concrete roof from a destroyed building into eight equal squares. Eventually Charlie could lay the pieces end to end to be the finishing layer of the makeshift bridge.
When it neared completion and there was nothing left for Mac to do, he pooled all the money the three had brought to Puerto Rico with them. Including the extra money from Dr. Wilde, they had $475, so they’d need to make a lot of trips to the grocery store—and he wanted to get started.
The moon was full and bright, casting an eerie glow on the devastation. Using basilisk mode, Mac ran down the road to the grocer to buy as much nonperishable food as he could carry, like peanut butter and soup and bottled water. After he paid, he stopped in the shadows outside the store to enable his basilisk mode again. He could hear the ocean nearby.
When he returned to the work site, he saw that Charlie and Maria were nearly finished. Charlie was carrying the last piece of the concrete roof over to the bridge. She laid it carefully on top, making a relatively even, smooth path across.
“There,” she said, dusting off her hands. “That’s it.” It was well after midnight. She flipped on her gecko ability as a precaution and ventured out onto the bridge. She jumped up and down a few times. It was solid. She glanced at the others. “We did it!”
Mac nodded approvingly. “Now just three nights left to get the rest of this cleaned up.”
Maria eyed the supplies that Mac had brought. “I hope the wild animals don’t get into these.”
Charlie and Mac looked at each other. “I didn’t think of that,” said Mac.
“Maybe we can hang the groceries from a tree or something,” said Maria. “I saw people do that once on TV.” She looked across the bridge and saw a light pole still standing, though it was bent. “Charlie, can you run back to Abu’s? There’s a rope in the garage and some canvas shopping bags with handles in the pantry. Mac and I will tie everything up while you’re gone and get some of this little stuff out of the road.”
“Back in a flash.” Charlie sped to Yolanda’s in cheetah mode and returned in a few minutes with the items. Mac packed the food and water into the canvas bags and strung the rope through the handles. Maria, in weremonkey mode, climbed the pole holding the ends of the rope and hung from the top by her tail. Charlie hoisted the stuff up and Maria tied the rope so the bags of groceries hung just above their heads.
Things were moving along once more. But the kids were beat.
By the sixth night, they’d cleared out most of the big stuff from the stretch across the bridge. While Charlie and Maria had continued moving the remaining debris off the road, Mac had made daily trips to the grocery store. Their food and water supply had grown large and they were eager to deliver it. They were running out of time.
Even if they didn’t finish, Charlie thought, at least what remained on the road was something ordinary people could handle. With the last of a huge leafy tree moved aside, Charlie could make out the shapes of a few houses. That was a good sign. There weren’t any lights coming from them, which worried Charlie, but then she remembered there was still no electricity up there.
Pausing to rest, Charlie tapped her device and turned on her new viper vision. She scanned the area, wondering if she’d be able to detect heat through the walls of the houses—was this ability that strong? She figured it wouldn’t hurt to test it. Venturing closer, she heard a dog bark and quickly spotted it on the porch of a house. She focused on that home and thought she detected a couple splotches of red. Could it be? She was hopeful that it wasn’t just her imagination.
Maria and Mac returned with one last load of supplies. Their money was gone. Maria untied the goods from the pole and Charlie hoisted them, like Santa Claus might, over her shoulder. The three of them trudged up the hill toward the houses.
Despite being the middle of the night, they left the goods on the doorsteps, knocked, then ran—they didn’t want to have to explain how they’d gotten there, but they knew the people would figure out that the passage must be open again.
Their last task was to finish removing the debris from the bottom part of the road that they’d left so people wouldn’t come in search of the midnight cleanup crew. It took them almost until morning, but they finished just hours before Yolanda would be taking them to the airport. It would be a big surprise for people driving past, but the kids wouldn’t be there to see it. That part didn’t matter. As they turned to go to Yolanda’s house to catch a couple hours of sleep, Mac stopped the girls.
“Hey,” he said. “We’re not going to get much sleep anyway. Want to just stay up?”
“And do what?” asked Maria.
Mac pointed down the hill, past the store, where he’d heard the ocean waves. “Finally try out our new abilities on water.”
Charlie’s and Maria’s faces lit up. “Sure, who needs sleep?” said Charlie. “Let’s go!”
Maria led them down a path to what was left of a small beach. Mac clicked on his basilisk lizard mode. The light green metallic liquid flowed over his body.
Maria clicked on her werealligator. She was getting used to morphing into the creature now, though she still didn’t like it. “Really gonna need to fix this back in Arizona,” she muttered. But she was excited to try out her swimming in this mode.
Charlie found a spot in the sand to settle in, and smiled as she watched her friends: Mac running on top of the waves, Maria gliding partially underwater.
After a few minutes, Charlie remembered wanting to test her starfish ability, so she went in too. She dunked her head under to see if it gave her any extra water features, but it didn’t appear to. Charlie wasn’t surprised. She surfaced and bobbed, loving the coolness on her skin and the night sky above. And for a brief moment, all seemed well in the world.
CHAPTER 27
Back to Reality
They slept the whole way home. When they got off the plane in Phoenix, Charlie’s mom, Mac’s dad, and Maria’s mom were there to pick them up at the gate. As Charlie ran to hug her mother, a TV monitor tuned to a news channel caught her eye. On the screen was a grainy photo from an airport security camera, showing two soldiers wearing bodysuits and face masks, getting into a limo. In the corner of the photo was part of a third person whose back was to the camera. All they could see was a swath of blond hair. The chyron at the bottom of the screen read, “Manhunt Continues in Guadalajara. American Suspects Armed and Dangerous.”
Charlie’s eyes widened. She pulled back from the hug and pointed to the screen. “Did you see this?”
Dr. Wilde nodded and gave Charlie a “boy do I have a story for you” look. “I’ll fill you in later,” she said as the group moved to the exit. Maria had seen it too, and she gave Charlie a wide-eyed questioning look. Charlie shrugged helplessly. They’d have to talk when Maria’s and Mac’s parents weren’t around. But now they were all excited to see their kids and hear about their work in Puerto Rico. The mystery would have to wait.
The families parted ways at the parking garage elevator, and finally Charlie was alone with her mom. They walked arm in arm, Charlie pulling her carry-on behind her. “What was that all about on the TV? Was that Kelly and the soldiers? It looked like Mega and Prowl.”
“That was them all right,” said Dr. Wilde grimly. “I’m not sure what they’re doing in Mexico, but they injured some customs officials at the airport and one of them is in a coma. They’re in big trouble. Nobody knows where they are, though.” She pointed out their car and they got in. “Your dad says Guadalajara has one of the best zoos in Latin America, which could be why they went there.”
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br /> “Wow.” It was a lot for Charlie to take in. After a week away from this mess, it was a harsh awakening. “What are we going to do?”
Mrs. Wilde backed out of her parking space and drove toward the garage exit. “Ms. Sabbith is trying to track them down. Once the news confirmed that they flew in from San Diego, she went down there and started looking for the van. She also finally got in touch with Captain Brenda Zimmerman—she was the one who originally hired Talos Global to work on Project Chimera.”
“Wow, Ms. Sabbith has been busy,” said Charlie.
“It’s amazing how hard it was for her to find them, but when the government goes top secret, they aren’t fooling around. Anyway, now Captain Zimmerman knows what Gray is up to. Whether she believes it to be as serious of a threat as we do remains to be seen.”
“Why wouldn’t she want to help?” asked Charlie. It seemed crazy not to.
“Maybe she’ll decide to.” Dr. Wilde didn’t sound hopeful. “But this whole situation turning people into hybrids and chimeras is one you have to see to believe, you know? We need to convince her that this project evolved into something crazy after she shuttered it all those years ago.”
Charlie let out a breath. “Wow,” she said. “So now what? When do you think Dr. Gray will come back with his soldiers?”
Dr. Wilde glanced at Charlie as she headed for the highway. “Honey, I don’t think they’ll be able to get back into the United States. They’re wanted … for a serious crime.”
“Even Kelly?” asked Charlie, looking fearful.
Dr. Wilde nodded. “Especially Kelly. The officer who is in a coma had a head wound … and a poisonous puncture wound to the stomach,” she said quietly. “It’s pretty obvious Kelly hasn’t stopped using her destructive powers to hurt people.” She let the words sink in, then added, “I’m afraid she’s gone too far to ever turn back.”
CHAPTER 28
New Abilities
The next day Mac and Maria showed up at Charlie’s house, eager to see what progress had been made in their absence. They’d seen the news. Now that they were here, Charlie told them everything her mom had said about Kelly and Dr. Gray and the soldiers.