“Murky!” she heard Laura call out from on the other side of the ants. “I told you to stay put!”
“I got bored!” she said honestly, then, less honestly, “and also, Chicago got worried and wouldn’t let me stay behind.”
“Murky!” Henderson called. “Get Chicago to back up!”
“But if I do that, the ants will be able to move this way!”
“Duh! And so will we!”
“Oh. Right. Got it,” Murky said. The problem was, she wasn’t sure how to make a dinosaur she was riding back up. Was there something she was supposed to say? Was she supposed to try to lead him around? She touched him on the top of the head and tried to turn it back the direction they had come, which thankfully he seemed to understand. He whipped his tail around to take out a few more ants, then started running down the hall back to the gate. Most of the townsfolk followed immediately, although some were obviously hesitant about following something that looked like a giant wingless bird of prey. There were ants starting to come from back in the direction where they had just been though, and that convinced the stragglers to fight their way past the remaining ants in their path.
Chicago and Murky burst out of the gate with the people close behind them, and Chicago immediately went for the path he had originally come down. At the top, Murky managed to get him to stop moving long enough to let her off and find Laura, who gave her the warmest, tightest hug the two sisters had ever shared. The townspeople came to a stop, milling around on the ledge and the slope, most of them anxiously looking back at the gate of the giant ant city as though expecting an army to come pouring out after them.
After waiting a number of moments and the ants still hadn’t done so, even Murky began to feel uneasy. A couple of ants came out to look at them, but as soon as they saw the direction the townspeople were heading, they ran back inside as though they were the ones that were scared.
“Laura, why does something about this give me a bad feeling?” Murky asked.
“I don’t know,” Laura said. “But that feeling? I’ve got it, too.”
Chapter Fourteen
The townspeople all went at least far enough down the tunnels to be out of eyesight of the ant city, and it was there that they finally took a moment to express their relief, as well as where Murky got to have her reunion with her parents. After a few minutes, Mr. Turnbull, the grouchy pharmacist, came up to the head of the group and started speaking. “Now that we’re out of there, let’s go.” He started walking and most of the people followed, although Laura, Murky, Jesse, and Henderson all took umbrage at his attitude.
“You don’t need to be a jerk about it, Turnbull,” Henderson said.
“The hell I don’t,” Mr. Turnbull said. “I’ll be damned if I have to follow a little punk like you any more than I have to.”
“Hey, we’re the ones that came all the way down here by ourselves and then kept every one of you from being ant food, didn’t we?”
Mr. Turnbull shook his head. “Probably despite your own best efforts at failing, I’m sure.”
“Hey!” Henderson’s father grabbed Mr. Turnbull by the shoulder and gripped the older man tightly. “That’s my son you’re speaking to, and he just saved us. If you keep speaking to him like that, I can make sure you get un-saved really quick.”
Henderson’s jaw dropped as he stared at his father in amazement. “Dad?”
Henderson’s dad looked at him with a combination of sadness and joy. “I’m proud of what you did today, George. If we don’t get out of this, I just want you to know that.”
Murky didn’t think she had ever seen Henderson look that close to crying, but he quickly hid it before anyone else could see.
Several young men had been carrying old Mrs. Harmsen, who normally needed a wheelchair, but they called out for the others to stop. “We have to take a break,” one of them said. “I’m not used to carrying an entire person this far.”
“I need a break from him as well,” Mrs. Harmsen said. “This young man smells funny. He smells like, before we were taken, he might have been…”
“We can’t stop,” Laura said to them. “I don’t know exactly how long we’ve been down here, but we have a time limit.” She gave everyone listening a brief version of everything Agent Larson had told them about what was going on, ending with the imminent threat of the military forcing the portal closed with them all on the wrong side.
“I highly doubt that’s true,” Mr. Turnbull said.
“If my kids say it’s true, then I believe them,” Murky and Laura’s mom said.
A younger kid came up to Murky and tugged on her shirt. “How do we get out?” he asked.
“Just follow us,” Murky said. “We’ll lead the way. We know which direction we came from. We just need to take a left at the giant carnivorous mushroom, then go up and to the right after the dinosaur cavern.”
“It was up and to the left at the dinosaurs.”
“It was definitely to the right.”
Harry Lupin, who managed the local Piggly Wiggly, gaped at them and scoffed. “Dinosaurs? Killer mushrooms? You have to be making that up.”
Henderson gave him an exasperated look. “Seriously, did you or did you not see
