The Bridge to Never Land (19 page)

What is he doing?
Sarah wondered as she heard J.D. shout. Then she saw him take off running, away from the ferry, with quite a few people chasing him.

She wanted to help but knew there was nothing she could do. Reluctantly, she turned and made for the ferry. Ahead she saw Aidan, nearly to the dock, looking back at her. He waved at her to hurry; the ferry was about to leave.

Sarah picked up her pace, reaching Aidan as he boarded.

“Where’s J.D.?” he said.

“He took off toward the monorail. He was leading the police away from us.”

“That’s nice of him. But what if they catch him?”

“Then we have to do this alone.”

A recorded voice over the ferry loudspeakers announced that the boat was about to depart for the Magic Kingdom. The deckhands were getting ready to take in the gangway. Sarah’s eyes anxiously scanned the throng onshore. Then she saw him—a lone figure sprinting toward the ferry.

“There’s J.D!” she said.

“Is anybody following him?” said Aidan.

“I don’t see anybody. He must have lost them.” Sarah ran to one of the deckhands. “Could you hold it just one second, for my friend there?”

The deckhand looked at J.D.’s sprinting figure. “One second,” he said.

“Thank you!” said Sarah. It was more like thirty seconds, but J.D. made the boat. He ran up the gangplank and collapsed on a bench, sweating and gasping.

“That was exciting,” he said.

“How’d you lose them?” said Aidan.

“It’s a big crowd,” said J.D. “I hid behind a guy selling balloons, then when they went past me, I circled back.”

“You know,” said Sarah, “when I saw you take off…for just a second there I was afraid you were leaving us.”

J.D. looked up at her and smiled. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said.

“Still,” said Sarah. “That was close.”

“Tell me about it,” said J.D.

CHAPTER 28

T
HEY MADE THEIR WAY TO FANTASYLAND
, walking separately, staying just close enough that they could keep track of each other in the dense crowd. When they reached Peter Pan’s Flight, they remained apart for a minute, scanning the area. Seeing no security people, they joined up and entered the Peter Pan building arcade, joining a line that snaked back and forth in the crowd-control maze.

“The sign said it’s a forty-five-minute wait,” said Aidan.

“This is not a bad place for us to be,” said J.D., keeping his voice low. “We’re out of the sun, and out of sight of anybody walking past out there.”

“So what do we do when we get on the ride?” said Sarah.

“Well, obviously we look at Big Ben,” said J.D. “And we look for a bird. Beyond that, I guess we mainly just try to observe as much as we can.”

“What about the…the secret ingredient?” said Sarah,
pointing to her backpack. “When do we use that?”

“We’ll have to figure that out once we get inside,” said J.D.

They inched forward, speaking little, wondering what lay ahead, barely aware of the horde of chattering tourists around them. Finally, they reached the front of the line, where a costumed ride attendant guided them onto a moving walkway running parallel to the line of “sailing ships” suspended from an overhead track.

It was a tight fit, but the three of them squeezed into one ship together, with Sarah in the middle, holding the backpack on her lap. The safety bar came down and the ship made a left turn into the ride, then angled upward.

Suddenly, they were in the nursery of the Darling house in London, looking down on Wendy, Michael, and John Darling. They heard music, an orchestra playing “You Can Fly!” They flew out the window and passed over Nana, the dog, who barked forlornly up at them. Now the ship was flying through the darkness above an elaborately detailed miniature replica of nighttime London—the Thames, the Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge, buildings, even streets with moving cars, their headlights lit.

“There’s Big Ben,” said Sarah, pointing ahead. All three of them leaned forward, eyes focused on the approaching clock tower.

Aidan made it out first. “It says 9:07,” he said.

“Do the clock hands move?” said J.D., squinting.

“Doesn’t look like it,” said Aidan.

“I think they’re painted on,” agreed Sarah.

“Do you see a bird?” said J.D.

Aidan and Sarah leaned out, looking down as their ship swept over Big Ben.

“I don’t see a bird,” said Sarah.

“Me either,” said Aidan. “But it’s pretty dark.”

“Okay, keep looking.”

They flew past the moon, upon which were silhouettes of Peter Pan flying with Wendy, John, and Michael Darling. Then the ship rounded a turn and they were flying over Never Land island, being fired at by a cannon on Captain Hook’s ship far below. They flew over a volcano, then mermaids, then Indians. Colorful illumination came from the scenes passing below; the ship was flying through darkness.

“I still haven’t seen a bird,” said Aidan.

“Yeah,” said Sarah. “It’s so dark in here.”

Ahead they could see a much larger version of the pirate ship, with Wendy, prodded by a gang of nasty-looking pirates, about to walk the plank.

They heard a harsh noise over the music.

“Did you hear that?” said Sarah.

They heard it again, a high-pitched
Caw! Caw!

Suddenly, there it was, appearing out of the gloom just before the pirate ship: Skull Rock, a ghostly, pale skeleton face of stone with gaping empty holes for its eyes and nose. But one of the holes wasn’t completely empty. “There!” cried Aidan, pointing at the skull’s right eye socket. Perched in the opening, staring at them, was a bird.

It was a Disney Audio-Animatronic creature with bugged-out eyeballs behind a bright yellow beak and a wide wingspan. It cawed again; the ship veered sharply left. The skull was gone.

They were passing the pirate ship now, but all three of them were looking back.

“Okay,” said Sarah. “That was definitely a bird.”

“Aidan,” said J.D. “Would you have been able to reach the bird from where you’re sitting?”

“I don’t think so,” said Aidan. “It was too far away.”

Now they were flying over Captain Hook, who was trying desperately—as he had been since the ride opened decades earlier—to escape from the jaws of the hungry crocodile, while Smee perpetually rowed to his captain’s rescue. Then the ship rounded another corner, and daylight appeared ahead; the ride was over.

“We need to ride again,” said J.D., as the safety bar lifted and they stepped onto the moving walkway.

“Right now?” said Aidan.

“Yup,” said J.D. “We know the time Ben says, and we found the bird. We can assume that what we’re supposed to feed the bird is starstuff; that’s what powers the bridge. But how do we feed the bird if we can’t reach it?”

“Could we hide somewhere and wait until the Magic Kingdom closes?” said Sarah. “Then we could sneak in and feed it.”

J.D. shook his head. “Won’t work. We have to feed it when Ben says—that’s 9:07 p.m. I’m pretty sure the park is still open then.”

“So we have to feed it while the ride is moving?” said Sarah. “How’re we supposed to do that?”

“Okay,” said J.D., “we need to look at the bird really carefully this time. We also need to time the ride exactly, down to the second.”

“Why?” said Aidan.

“So we can know exactly how long it takes to get to the bird. We also need to know the exact time of day. That way we can get on the ride at the right time to reach the bird at exactly 9:07 p.m.”

“How do you know it’s p.m.?” said Sarah. “Couldn’t it be a.m.?”

“Nope,” said J.D. “It’s nighttime in the London scene. The time Ben says has to be p.m.”

They were walking back to the line again. J.D. pointed to the waiting-time sign, which now said fifty minutes. “That’s another thing we have to factor in,” he said. “The wait time.”

“This is getting really complicated,” said Aidan.

“And we still don’t know how we’re gonna feed the bird,”
said Sarah.

“Well, we’d better figure it out fast,” said J.D., looking at his watch. “It’s 6:30 p.m., which means we have less than three hours left.”

“And we’re going to use up nearly an hour of that taking the ride again,” said Sarah, looking at the line snaking ahead.

“Other than that,” said Aidan. “We’re doing great.”

Armstrong knew Disney was very good at finding missing children in the parks; the company was famed for its efficiency and professionalism in such matters. So rather than try to compete with the experts, Armstrong chose a different tactic: cheating.

He walked slowly along the Magic Kingdom’s Main Street, looking for a Disney security guard. He’d seen the Disney security team at the main entrance, searching handbags; their uniforms consisted of a white, neatly-pressed, collared shirt, dark pants, and black shoes. They wouldn’t be hard to spot amid all the T-shirts and tank tops.

Cinderella Castle loomed into the sky in front of him. He passed a crowd gathered to hear a brass band play Dixieland music. Just ahead, outside the Plaza Ice Cream Parlor, he spotted a security man old enough to be his grandfather.

He was eating an ice-cream cone and listening to the band, his foot tapping to the music.

Armstrong moved in. He came from slightly behind and to the side, bumping hard into the guard’s left shoulder. The top scoop of ice cream—mint chip, Armstrong noted—went airborne, and the security guard instinctively threw out his right hand to catch it.

In that instant Armstrong expertly slipped the black radio off the man’s belt, apologizing profusely at the same time.

“I’m so, so sorry! I’ll buy you another!” Armstrong said, slipping the radio into his back pocket.

“Don’t be silly! Just an accident.”

“You sure?” Armstrong said.

“Absolutely! Forget it! Really!” said the guard. Armstrong suspected that the reason the guard was being so insistent was that he was not supposed to be eating on duty.

Mumbling one more apology, Armstrong backed into the crowd and disappeared.

After walking twenty yards, he fished the radio out of his pocket and pressed it to his ear—security dispatch was directing guards around the park; other guards were checking in and reporting their positions.

Armstrong was hearing it all.

CHAPTER 29

A
S THE WAITING-TIME SIGN HAD PREDICTED
, it took them fifty minutes to get to the front of the line for Peter Pan’s Flight. They squeezed into the flying ship and J.D. pressed a button on his watch, which was in stopwatch mode. The safety bar came down; the ship rounded the corner and flew into the nursery, then out over nighttime London. All of them leaned forward as they approached Big Ben.

“It still says 9:07,” said Aidan.

“Fifty seconds to Ben,” said J.D., looking at the glowing dial of his watch. They flew past the moon into Never Land—the volcano, the mermaids, the Indians. In the distance they saw the form of Wendy on the plank.

“Coming up,” said Sarah, softly. They stared intently ahead.

Caw! Caw!

Skull Rock loomed out of the darkness.

“Two minutes, fifteen seconds,” said J.D. Aidan reached
his arm toward the bird; it was well out of reach. The ship turned left; the skull disappeared.

J.D. looked up from his watch. “We’re going to have about five seconds, max, near the bird,” he said. “That doesn’t leave us much margin for error.”

“Assuming we even figure out what we’re supposed to do,” said Aidan.

“We’d better figure it out soon,” said J.D. “It’s almost 7:30. We’re under two hours now.”

They exited the ride; it was still light out, but the sun was waning. The Disney crowd, if anything, had grown. It swirled around Aidan, Sarah, and J.D. as they stood by the stroller-parking area outside Peter Pan’s Flight. The waiting-time sign for the ride now showed fifty-five minutes.

“Okay,” said J.D. “It’s two minutes, fifteen seconds to the bird, so to reach it at 9:07, we need to board the ship at 9:04 and forty-five seconds. Assuming the waiting time is still fifty-five minutes, we’d want to get in line at…8:09 p.m. and forty-five seconds.”

“How do you do that in your head?” said Aidan.

“It’s called subtraction,” said J.D. “They used to teach it in school. Anyway, we’d want to give ourselves a cushion, so let’s say we’ll get in line at eight p.m. That gives us a half hour now to figure out the bridge.”

“I don’t think we should stay out here in the open,” said Sarah. “Let’s go into that gift shop.”

“Tinker Bell’s Fairy Treasures?” said Aidan. “Seriously?”

“You have a better idea?” said Sarah.

“Of course not,” said Aidan, reluctantly following Sarah and J.D. into the shop. “I don’t even know how to subtract.”

Agents Gomez and Blight had split up at Cinderella Castle, Gomez going left into Frontierland, Blight straight ahead into Fantasyland. Like Gomez, she was accompanied by a senior security guard listening to dispatch over a radio earpiece.

The code had been transmitted only minutes earlier—“Christopher Robin.” Missing child! A description of both Sarah and Aidan had then been read over the secure radio. Over five thousand Cast Members in the Magic Kingdom heard the alert. On average, a Christopher Robin would result in thirty-seven false alarms—the wrong child matching the description. But despite that number, on any given day, a missing child was found within the first eleven minutes of the issue of such an alert.

So far there had been sixteen reported matches. The security man had relayed these to Blight, but they had all been in other areas of the park, and had all turned out to be false alarms.

Now dispatch was reporting a seventeenth match—this
one nearby.

“Copy that, Crow’s Nest,” the security man said into his radio. “This is one-nine, en route to DC. Stand by.” He said to Blight, “This one’s ours.”

“Review in progress, one-nine,” came the dispatcher’s voice. This meant they were reviewing video footage, looking for Sarah’s likeness.

Blight and the guard broke into a jog, quickly reaching the carousel. They spun in circles, trying to separate one face from another in a moving sea of thousands of park guests. One minute passed…two…

The dispatcher reported. “All units, we have a twenty on Christopher Robin. Last seen passing DC headed in the direction of PPF. Units one-seven and one-three converge. All other units, stand by.”

“We’ve got confirmation,” the guard told Agent Blight. “Your colleague is on his way.”

“That was fast,” said Blight.

“This is Disney,” said the guard.

“Where to?”

“Straight ahead.”

The two hurried to Peter Pan’s Flight. They walked the length of the arcade, studying each face in the long line. They then observed the loading and unloading area, waiting until a group they watched enter the ride came out the exit. They watched each ship intently but saw no sign of the
runaways.

“Nothing,” Blight said. “What’s next?”

“Small World,” said the guard, leading her across the concourse. Their attention was focused ahead, on the crowd surging into the hugely popular ride. Neither even glanced at another building close by, though they passed within fifteen yards of it: Tinker Bell’s Fairy Treasures.

Sarah, J.D., and Aidan huddled in a corner of the gift shop, next to a display of Tinker Bell jewelry. They kept their voices low to avoid being overheard by the steady flow of souvenir shoppers grazing around them.

J.D. glanced at his watch. “We have twenty-six minutes to get back in line,” he said.

“No pressure or anything,” said Aidan.

“Okay,” said Sarah, “to feed the bird, we have to get star-stuff to it, but we can’t reach it from the ship. Could maybe one of us jump out of the ship?”

“I’m not sure, but I think it’s too high up,” said J.D. “You might not be able to reach the bird from the floor even if you managed to jump out without breaking your ankles.”

“Could we throw some starstuff at the bird?” said Aidan.

“Hmm,” said Sarah. “I’ve only handled a little, but I don’t see how you could throw it. It doesn’t seem to have any, I dunno,
weight
to it. It seems to just…flow, almost like it has its own mind.”

J.D. said, “But you can transport it. You’ve been transporting it, in the gold box.” Sarah’s glance fell on the Tinker Bell jewelry. Suddenly, her eyes went wide.

“The locket!” she exclaimed.

One of the shop clerks looked over and said, “Can I help you with some jewelry?”

“No, sorry,” said Sarah. Lowering her voice again, she said, “We use the locket Pete’s wife gave us!”

“Of course,” said J.D., pulling the locket out of his pocket. “Why didn’t I think of that? That’s why he put the message in there!”

“Along with a little starstuff,” said Sarah. “He was showing us how to use it!”

“What are we talking about?” said Aidan.

Sarah rolled her eyes. “We’re going to put some starstuff in Pete’s locket and throw it to the bird,” she said. “It’s your idea, moron.”

“It is?” said Aidan.

J.D. was looking at his watch. “Okay,” he said, “we have to be in line in twenty minutes. I need to find a pay phone so I can get the exact time and set my watch to it. I’ll go alone so we’re not all together. You guys stay out of sight. Meet me at the line in fifteen minutes, okay?”

“When do we put the starstuff into the locket?” said Sarah.

J.D. frowned. “Not here, obviously. I guess we’ll have to do it when we’re in the line. Aidan and I can huddle around you—do you think you could pour some in quickly?”

“I guess I’ll have to,” said Sarah.

“Okay,” said J.D. “Meet you at the line in fifteen. We’re going to have one chance at this, and that’s it.” Then he was out the door, disappearing into the crowd.

They perched atop the wrought-iron work mounted on the peak of the Haunted Mansion—a decoration with the dual purpose of keeping birds off the roof. They also perched on the stone cap of every gable and the edge of every gutter—hundreds of ravens, in regimented lines. Not a beak turned, not an eye flinched, not a wing stirred.

“Look, Daddy!” a girl cried out from the waiting line. “Look at all the black birds!”

“Amazingly real-looking, aren’t they, sweetheart?”

“But they
are
real, Daddy.”

“Of course they are!”

“I don’t like them, Daddy.”

“Why not?”

“I can feel them.”

“Here, hold my hand.”

She reached for his hand but kept her worried eyes on the birds.

The father grinned, marveling at Disney’s attention to detail.