Wildwood Imperium (Wildwood Chronicles 3)

ERROR, WRONG PASS CODE, the screen advertised brightly, once again. And then: TWO MORE ATTEMPTS ALLOWED.

Unthank slapped his cheek firmly, trying to banish the needling urgency that was making his fingers fail so spectacularly. He closed his eyes; he breathed deeply.

Smile.

He tried again.

ERROR, WRONG PASS CODE.

Unthank grunted, once, very loudly. Did it have to be so hard?

ONE MORE ATTEMPT ALLOWED. IF ENTERED IN ERROR AGAIN, CLEARANCE WILL BE SUSPENDED. CHECK EMAIL TO RESET PASS CODE. THANK YOU!

Unthank waved his hands impatiently at the little screen above the keypad. “Okay, okay, I get it!” he hollered. He channeled his thoughts; he calmed his quivering digits. He thought of the kids, of the orphans. He thought of what he owed them.

He tried again.

The elevator stopped. It hadn’t just come to a smooth halt, like it would if it were to arrive at a floor, but jerked and froze. It had just cleared Elsie’s feet; she felt a tingling sensation over her entire body, as if she were a freshly torn strip of Velcro. Looking down, she could only assume the worst: that somehow Harry’s body had stopped the downward momentum of the elevator. She called out weakly, “Harry?”

Ruthie, having just extricated herself from her hiding place, called down to Elsie. “Are they okay?” she shouted desperately.

Elsie shook her head, mouthing: “I don’t know.”

A minute passed. No sound came in response. Elsie felt a sob welling in her chest.

Suddenly, from a shallow chink in the wall, she saw two dirty hands reach up and grab the top of the elevator car. Shortly, a face presented itself: It was Harry. Squeezing his thick frame between the car and the wall of the shaft, he managed to get himself onto the top of the elevator. His face was streaked with grease, and little red scratches crisscrossed his forehead. He had a wild-eyed look on his face. He turned around and thrust a hand back down the little crevice he’d climbed through and brought it back out with another hand firmly in its grip. It was Oz, who arrived at the top of the car similarly covered in soot and lacerations.

“It stopped . . . ,” mumbled Harry once Oz had been pulled from the crack between the wall and the car. “Just . . .” He held his greasy fingers up, his thumb and forefinger only inches apart.

Elsie wanted to hug him. She wanted to throw her arms around him and just fiercely hug the boy, this greasy boy. But before she could act on the very friendly and comradely instinct, they all heard the sound of whoever it was inside the elevator car they were standing on, trying to get out.

It sounded like a herd of rhinos contained in a small metal box.

Suddenly, a small door at their feet flew open, slamming back with a loud clang.

Elsie looked into the elevator, expecting to see rhinoceri. Instead, she saw two frothing-mad stevedores.

“Let’s GO!” shouted Elsie, and the four of them—Elsie, Harry, Oz, and Ruthie—leapt back onto the ladder and began climbing as if their lives depended on it, which, in point of fact, they did.

They managed to buy themselves some time; the stevedores had a hard go of it, extracting their broad frames from the small opening in the top of the elevator. When they finally managed it, two genies being sucked from the opening of a bottle, they ground their teeth angrily—so angrily that Elsie could actually hear the grating noise from her position on the ladder, twenty feet above them.

“ORPHANS!” shouted one of them, waving his overlarge pipe wrench above his head. “The attack is a DECOY!”

“UNNNTHAAANK!” shouted the other, rather dramatically.

The ladder gave a little quake as the two stevedores, one after the other, clambered onto the nearest rungs and gave chase to the duct-rats.

What the stevedores had over the children in terms of strength and arm span, the Unadoptables well made up for by sheer agility, speed, and a seemingly perpetual supply of adrenaline. They flew up the rungs of the ladder as if it were a web and they were its spider-creators, dashing for a fly caught in the center. Elsie took up the rear, keeping an eye on the progress of their pursuers; they were not far behind.

“Move, guys, move!” she shouted to the three climbers ahead of her.

“We command you to stop!” shouted one of the stevedores. He pulled his pipe wrench from a loop at his leg and swung it in Elsie’s direction. “I’m going to kneecap the lot of you!”

This gave Elsie a needed extra jolt of energy and she doubled her efforts, climbing the ladder rung over rung.

The elevator shaft wheeled below them; the distance, and thereby the potential free fall, to the stopped elevator car grew and grew. The stevedores continued to howl; the duct-rats climbed as fast as their little bodies could manage.

Elsie craned her head upward; she could see the clambering feet of Ruthie, leading the pack some thirty feet above her. “Keep an eye out, Ruthie!” she shouted. “The vent!”