A second later, the birds-eye helicopter view was restored. It looked down on a scene from a little boy’s action-figure playtime: army guys spread all around, a jumble of military, police, and civilian vehicles all bunched up, some monsters wandering around on the side, and a line of aliens running away from the heart of the action – a rearing, six-legged blue… lizard? Dinosaur. Tiger? Jeremiah’s eyes bugged out. “Is that the news van?”
To this point, no one had tried to stop the aliens. Jeremiah assumed that whoever was calling the shots there was trying to avoid giving offence. Even when the orange spider thing had charged, it seemed they had only fired warning shots.
Now, things changed.
The creature launched itself forward at a group of soldiers standing on the other side of the closest Humvee, moving with a powerful, feline grace.
The monster was almost as big as the Humvee it leaped over to get at the men, lashing out with one front paw, sending a man flying. Soldiers reacted all around it.
The coverage from the helicopter was silent, but Jeremiah could almost hear the firecracker sounds, the sharp report of automatic weapons. “No!” he shouted. He cast about desperately for someone who could stop this. If they start shooting, and this turns messy, how will we get the kids back?
By the time Jeremiah turned back to the screen, the beast had collapsed, thrashing, to the ground.
A sick lump of despair was churning in his belly. He could picture Jeff and Suzy stranded on a hostile alien planet, afraid, needing their parents. He saw them running from six-legged dinosaurs, two-headed dogs, and snake-faced men with wands.
Wands.
His mind jerked to a stop.
He had seen the alien use its wand to switch the car for the orange spider thing. The wand could do it. He knew it was far-fetched and improbable, but as he watched the chaos unfold on the screen, he made a decision: he would get a wand and figure out how to use it to bring his kids home.
And far-fetched and improbable though it was, the decision gave him a glimmer of hope.
FIFTEEN
Suzy crouched over Aiden, who lay in fetal position on the floor with his arms wrapped around himself, moaning. She didn’t know how to help him, but she couldn’t stand doing nothing.
She put a hand on his arm. “Aiden, it’s okay. Do you think,” she stopped at the sound of frantic screaming from down the hall. Her mind raced.
“Jeff!” Suzy shouted, “Didn’t you and Nacho get up on the roof once?”
Jeff’s eyes grew wide. “Yeah! Yes! That’s where we need to go!” Then his expression fell. “But we only got up there because the door to that furnace-room janitor’s-office place was open after Awards Night last year. Every other time we’ve tried to get in there, it’s been locked.”
“The stairs are in the furnace room?”
“The ladder, yeah.” Suzy stared at him without seeing, her eyes glassy, lost in thought. Then Jeff erupted, “We can get in through the ceiling!”
“It won’t support our weight, remember!?” Suzy gestured wildly at the twisted aluminum ceiling frame, the gaping hole, and their two injured classmates.
“No, it will. We just have to distribute our weight better. No LISTEN!” Jeff yelled over Suzy’s objection. “I learned about this in Scouts. When you’re on thin ice, you spread out your weight as much as you can. Phil and Aiden had all their weight on that one section, but we can spread our legs wide and try to walk on our hands, too.”
Jeff spread his arms and legs wide and did a little Oompa-Loompa step, rocking from one leg to the other. Suzy thought he looked really dumb, especially with his face so earnest, and she felt bad for him. “And we’ll stay a ways away from each other,” he concluded.
Suzy considered.
Jeff ran over to Ms. Hacking’s desk, which was a few inches higher than the student desks. He started to climb up, then pushed over the computer tower and climbed onto it, giving himself a few extra inches to reach the ceiling tiles.
Suzy made her decision. Time to be a leader.
She grabbed Zoe and Paola and pulled them to their feet. “Come on! We’re going to the roof. Follow Jeff into the ceiling, but stay spread out. It’s not that strong.” She gestured vaguely at the wreckage from Phil’s failed attempt.
“Why the roof?”
Suzy looked up. It was Ryan who had asked, but several others were looking at her. She tried to sound confident. “We’ll just go up there until we know what they’re doing with everyone else. Maybe they’ll be friendly, and we can come back down soon.”
Through the wall, they heard Ms. Ablom’s class explode into screams. “Right now!” Suzy shouted, and she ran for Ms. Hacking’s desk. Zoe and Paola were right behind her.
Suzy helped Zoe up and yelled at her to spread out and not stay close to anyone. She heard Jeff up above saying something about cables and sharp edges, but she was helping Paola up, and the screaming from the next room was blocking out everything.
Ryan knit his fingers together and offered her a step up. Suzy put her hand on his shoulder and started to lift her foot up, but then she thought of something and jumped down. Prithi took her place.
Suzy pounded on the closet behind Ms. Hacking’s desk and yelled, “We’re going to the roof! Come with us.”
She ran around the debris from the ceiling hole to Aiden, grabbed his arm and tried to pull him up. The boy made an awful, pitiful sound that was half whine, half scream, and he pulled away without looking at her.
Suzy dropped his hand and ran to Phil,
