Disney at Dawn

Maybeck had to get it back. He smashed into bamboo and rubber trees, baby banyans and mangrove. He sloshed through the flooded jungle floor, quickly gaining on the monkey.

Maybeck’s progress registered on the monkey’s face as wide-eyed terror. It shrieked and exploded into a frenzy, briefly increasing its lead on Maybeck. But only briefly.

Maybeck broke out of the jungle and felt something hard beneath his feet. He looked down: train tracks! The Wildlife Express Train was going through its morning test run. Maybeck jumped out of the way when he heard a blast from the train’s whistle. “You crazy?” the conductor shouted through the open window.

He’d been spotted. As the train passed, he saw the conductor reaching for his radio.

Not good.

The train whistle pierced the morning air, sending a flock of sandhill cranes into the blue sky. Maybeck spotted the monkey. It had been crouched in the center of the birds. He closed the distance to ten yards, then five.

The train had followed a long, sweeping curve of track but was now coming around and catching up to them. It reappeared to Maybeck’s right. The monkey changed directions, going straight for the train. Maybeck skidded to a stop, caught a toe, and went down hard.

He looked up to see the monkey slip beneath a train car, the pillowcase in hand. Maybeck hurried to his feet and ran toward the train. The train conductor hung out of the locomotive, shouting at him. Maybeck squatted in time to see the monkey racing across a short distance of grass toward more jungle. There was no way Maybeck was about to crawl under a moving train. He waited it out impatiently. It seemed to move very slowly. Finally, Maybeck took off toward the end of the train and came around it, once again crossing the tracks.

He found himself next to the Chakranadi Chicken Shop. He came to a halting stop, looked left…right…there! A flash of the white pillowcase was all he caught—just rounding a bend in the path. He took off, heading away from Flights of Wonder. Again, his size and speed overcame the monkey’s efforts.

The monkey sensed its pursuer and skittered back and forth in a zigzag, chattering loudly. It crossed the path and shot straight up a dangling rope toward a concrete tower. It reached the turret, nearly thirty feet off the ground, and briefly disappeared. The next time Maybeck saw it, the monkey—still carrying the pillowcase—hurried across a set of ropes toward a crumbling Asian temple encased in bamboo scaffolding. This was on an island surrounded by a narrow moat.

Maybeck stopped at the concrete tower. The end of the rope the monkey had climbed was frayed as if it had been chewed through. He studied the layout, noticing that the rope bridges co

The monkey disappeared into the red brick temple, dragging the pillowcase behind it, and was gone.

Maybeck, understanding the importance of acting quickly, rolled up his pant legs, pulled off his shoes, and waded into the murky water. A pair of ducks startled and splashed away to the other side of the temple, squawking and quacking.

Maybeck felt the cold mud ooze between his toes. Bubbles rose to the surface all around him, giving off an unpleasant odor.

He faced a wooden door with iron bars over its small, square window. It was the only way into the temple that he could see.

He arrived there in five giant steps and, sloshing out of the water, reached for the door’s handle.

23

WILLA CHECKED PHILBY’S MAP once more: he had marked the location of a feeding station—disguised as a large stump—at the edge of the sava

She pushed though the forest, following the map, and reached the edge of the sprawling sava

There, quite some distance away, she saw a stump, thinking immediately that it couldn’t possibly be Philby’s stump because it looked so real. But the location was right, so she decided to have a look.

The problem was, there was no way to sneak up toward a stump in the middle of a field without being seen. She had to cross a hundred yards in the open. Not that there was anyone to see her, but another training truck could come by at any minute. She decided rather than run out and look suspicious, she would walk casually—just another day on the job. Hopefully, the ranger uniform would do the rest.

Then, taking in her surroundings, she happened to look back.

At first, she thought it was an alligator. Terror gripped her: alligators ate people. It happened all the time in Florida. She’d heard they could run faster than humans, and when you saw one you didn’t want to run because it teased them into chasing you—and if they chased you, they considered you food. So she continued walking, though slightly faster than before. The stump—or fake stump—rose at least three feet off the ground. If she could only reach it in time…

But then she looked again. It wasn’t an alligator after all, but a giant lizard, maybe six feet long. She’d studied Komodo dragons in school, and this looked pretty much exactly like one. Komodos didn’t eat people, but they were known to bite and do serious harm. She didn’t know the rule about Komodos—did you run or walk? The lizard turned sideways for a second, as if to size her up, and once again she changed her mind: it wasn’t a Komodo; it looked more…prehistoric, with thick scales and…was that possible?…wings, tucked in along its back. It looked more like…

A dragon. She’d read stories about dragons. Had seen movies. She’d always considered them mythological creatures. But now she was looking at one.

It had a disgusting, pink tongue that flicked like a snake’s—but about two feet long. The tongue curled as it drew back between the rows of gray, stubby teeth.

She wanted to think of this as coincidence—the two of them had just happened to cross paths, and it was now following her. Tracking her was more to the point, she thought. But then something even more strange entered her thoughts: what if Jez was indeed locked up in the stump—the food locker—and the dragon was some kind of patrol for the Overtakers? After all, the safari was filled with all sorts of animals, from giraffes to zebras, but a scaly Asian dragon with wings?

The Overtakers.

It was the first thing to come to her: if Jez was being kept out here on the sava

So what exactly was the dragon waiting for? It just lingered back there, a dozen yards away, trolling back and forth across the grassy landscape as if sniffing around for food. If he was going to attack her, why not get to it?

Could a dragon possibly think? Could it be waiting to see if she headed for the stump? She subtly increased both the quickness and the length of her strides. She glanced back to see that the dragon had stayed right with her. It didn’t seem to be moving any faster, either, and yet…there it was.

Now more convinced than ever that she was its intended target, she looked around and realized that she was all alone out on the sava