Her parents were cocooned to the “dining table” a couple spaces over from each other. Her mom was too covered up to move or speak, but her father’s head was completely uncovered, and he became noticeably emotional at seeing her. “Laura! You need to get out of here, or they’ll get you too.”
“I’m not going anywhere. We came all the way down here to rescue all of you.” Laura ran up to her father and began working at the cocoon. The hardened substance was enough to keep the people immobile, but she found that with a lot of work she could chip away at it. Looking around for some kind of tool she could use to help her, all she found was a few chunks of grisly human bones. She shuddered quietly to herself but otherwise didn’t hesitate to grab one and use it to hammer the resin until her father was able to break the rest of the way free by himself. He immediately found something else hard, and the two of them worked to free Laura’s mom as well while Jesse made a beeline for his own mother.
“Where’s Murky?” Laura’s mother asked once her mouth was free.
“She’s outside this city,” Laura said. “She’s waiting with our, um, dinosaur.”
Her father looked at her with bewilderment, but he didn’t seem to disbelieve her. “There’s dinosaurs down here as well as monster insects?”
“Yeah, and a lot of other things,” Laura said. “Why? Didn’t any of you see them as the ants were taking you down here?”
“There wasn’t a lot that we could see, with how fast they moved us,” Laura’s mom said. “I think they took us on a different path than you went. What is even going on? What is this place?”
“It’s a long story that we’ll have to tell later, after we get back to the surface,” Laura said. “The ants haven’t killed anyone yet, have they?”
“Not anyone from Kettle Hollow that I’ve seen so far,” her father said. “Those soldiers that were here before us, though…”
“There’s nothing we can do for them now,” Laura said. “But we have to free the rest of the townsfolk before the ants realize that Henderson and his BMX bug are just a distraction.”
The work of freeing them was frustratingly slow at first, and Laura was worried for several minutes. But each new person they freed helped free the others, and soon everyone from Kettle Hollow was out of their resin cocoons and ready for someone to tell them what to do next. Laura realized with a start that most of them were waiting on her. She had expected that once she got them free she would no longer have to be the one taking on the leadership. Except none of them knew how to get out of here, and Laura and Jesse did.
“Um, let’s go,” she said to hundreds of people milling around looking for someone to guide them. “We should be able to get out the way we came.”
“Wait,” someone said. He had to push his way through the crowd before Laura realized it was Henderson’s father. “What about my son? Where did he go?”
That was a really good question, and one Laura wasn’t entirely prepared to answer. But while she hadn’t been too self-conscious about leading her three friends, she was suddenly very much aware that she could look unworthy to all these people if she didn’t think her response through carefully.
So she lied. “We have a plan.” She immediately felt bad about it, and her parents, both of whom knew her well enough, exchanged glances that told her she wasn’t fooling them. “Henderson is going to meet us out in front of the main gate.”
Before anyone could call her on her fib, she pointed them all in the direction of the stairs and had them go up, staying as close together as possible in the hopes that a tighter group would be less likely to be discovered.
They didn’t get very far. Only two turns back down the direction they had come, they found Henderson, but Henderson wasn’t alone. The aphid he’d been riding had been impaled with one of the ants’ spears, and a large group of the ants surrounded him and were moving in to attack. They turned at the approach of the townsfolk, and she could see that, even though they outnumbered the ants by quite a bit, there wasn’t a lot of chance that they were going to escape this.
At least Murky’s not here for this, Laura thought. I hope she and that silly dinosaur realize what’s going on and run as far away from here as possible.
The ants chittered a battle cry, then ran at the petrified people of Kettle Hollow.
Chapter Thirteen
“So, uh, how do you like being a dinosaur?”
It was impossible for Murky to be sure, but the way the velociraptor tilted its head made her think that it might also really understand her question. Chicago didn’t do anything in the way of a response, however. Murky decided to take that as a sign that it was okay to continue.
“I’ve met all kinds of animals, but you’re the first dinosaur I ever met,” Murky said. “Uh, obviously. It’s not like there’s a lot of you running around in my world.”
The dinosaur huffed, then turned its head around to scratch its back with its teeth. It was a very bird-like gesture that Murky never would have thought a dinosaur would do.
“Do you think you would like it up top with us? You could come live at my house.”
She didn’t actually think that would be a plausible situation. It was nice to think about though, although it wouldn’t do her much good if she didn’t have a house or family to go back to.
Murky leaned back against
