“Stay… with me,” he says, cutting between Pocahontas and a Dracula from the Haunted Mansion.
“Up the stairs!” Gillian calls out as the doors whiz by on both sides of the hallway.
But Charlie just keeps running. It’s not until the tunnel starts to curve to the left that I understand what he’s doing. Behind us, the screams of the crowd muffle and fade – quickly replaced by the echoed footsteps of whoever’s chasing us. I turn back to see what’s going on, but thanks to the arc of the hallway, we can’t see them. Which means they can’t see us.
“Now…!” Charlie says, making a sharp right into a short corridor. At the end, he rips open the metal utility door and holds it open for us. Inside, yellow-painted stairs head straight up. I dart in first, followed by Gillian. Charlie’s in the rear. I bound up the stairs two at a time, spiraling toward the top. Gillian’s doing her best, but she’s not as fast.
“Move!” Charlie barks. Squeezing past her, he scrambles upward, putting himself between me and Gillian. He touches my shoulder and nudges me forward.
“I’m going as fast as I can,” I tell him.
At the top of the landing, both of us stop at a closed metal door. Our breathing’s heavy. Charlie’s is heavier than mine. It’s been almost three days since he’s had his medication.
“Are you sure you’re-”
“I’m fine,” he insists. But as I put a hand on the metal bar that’ll open the stairwell door, he says two words that, as long as I’ve known him, have never left his lips.
“Be careful.”
I nod – and with a soft push – inch the door open. Thanks to all the twists and turns of the tunnel, we have no idea where we are. Sticking my head inside, I can barely see anything. The room’s dark, but it appears to be empty. We’re in a back room… or maybe an oversized closet, if I had to guess. Sliding inside, I step lightly and search for context clues. Over my shoulder, Charlie and Gillian close the door to the stairwell and the rest of our light vanishes. At first, I’m completely blind, but as my eyes adjust to the dark, I spot a thin sliver of white light straight ahead. It’s coming from the other side – another door.
Frankenstein-walking with my arms straight out, I reach the wood paneling and feel my way down to the doorknob. A twist leads us to the next room, which is just as dark. This time, though, there’s someone in the-
BAM!
A gunshot roars and I duck down as fast as I can. Behind me, there’s a thud against the floor. I spin around and reach out – but I can’t find Charlie.
74
“C’mon – let’s go!” Joey shouted as she punched her horn, honking wildly at the blue Lincoln Town Car with the “GRNDPA7” personalized license plate. Trapped in the enormous line of rental cars and overstocked minivans that were slowly filing into the Walt Disney World parking lot, Joey was ready to rip the steering wheel from the dashboard. “Yes – you! Pump the gas and pull your rolling boat into Dopey 110! Just follow the other cars! Dopey 110!”
“Are you not enjoying your Disney experience?” Noreen asked in her ear.
“Finally!” Joey announced as she reached the front of the line. She was about to hit the gas, but a Disney employee with a Day-Glo yellow vest was blocking the road and waving her to the left like an airline runway guide.
“All vehicles to the left, ma’am,” he called out as nice as possible.
Joey stopped short, refusing to turn. “I need to get to the front gate!” she called out.
“All vehicles to the left,” he repeated.
Joey still didn’t move. “Didn’t you hear what I-?”
Within seconds, two other employees approached her window. “Is there a problem, ma’am?”
“I need to get to the front gate. Now!”
“Y’know our trams run every few minutes…” the shorter employee pointed out.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the other employee added. “But unless you have a handicapped sticker, you’ll have to park right here like everyone el-”
Joey pulled her dad’s badge and rammed it in his face. “You know what this means, Walt? It means I’m not parking in Dopey 110!”
Silently, the two employees backed away from the car and motioned for the man in the yellow vest to step aside. Without a word, Joey slammed the gas and sped for the front gates of the Magic Kingdom.
75
“Get down,” Charlie urges, yanking me by the leg.
I hit the carpet hard and a hot rug-burn scorches the tip of my chin. On our far right is the silhouette of our attacker – standing in the corner, trying to blend into the shadows. He’s bent over. Reloading…
There’s no way I’m giving him the chance. Pouncing forward, I leap up toward the silhouette. Another shot rings out. Not a gunshot… an explosion… one after the other… popping… like fireworks. Before our attacker even realizes I’m there, I crash into him and wrap both arms around his waist. It’s like tackling a vacuum cleaner. We slam into the floor with a metal clank.
The house lights slowly rise and I get my first good look at the person I’ve got pinned to the carpet. It’s John F. Kennedy.
“In this Hall of Presidents, we look upon a mirror of ourselves,” Maya Angelou’s recorded voice booms on the other side of the blue curtain. Along the wall, there’s an Andrew Jackson robot without a leg, a wicker basket full of ties and bow ties, and a Styrofoam head with a fluffy blow-dried wig that’s labeled “Bill Clinton.” Backstage – it’s only backstage.
“Ladies and gentlemen… the Presidents of the United States!” Maya Angelou announces. Trumpets blare, the crowd applauds, and I glance up at the ceiling, where automated pulleys raise the main curtain. The velvet blue one that hides us is still in place.
“Let’s go, Oswald,” Charlie says, reaching down to help me up.
To our right, a man in a Paul Revere outfit bursts through a side door. He gets one look at the three of us standing over JFK. The walkie-talkie goes straight to his lips. “Security… I got a twenty-two over here… I need someone at the HOP.”
Charlie tugs on my arm, and as I fight to get to my feet, I step over JFK’s animatronic chest. Gillian’s already heading toward the side door on our left. Charlie pauses, weighing whether to follow, but the only other choices are toward Paul Revere, under the curtain and past the five hundred people in the audience, or back the way we came. Running past Charlie, I grab the back of his collar and push him forward. Even he knows when there’s no choice. We both follow Gillian.
Racing through the side door, she leads us into a red-carpeted room filled with fake antique furniture and phony Colonial American flags. Charlie grabs a rocking chair and wedges it against the door we just left. Paul Revere pounds and shouts, but he’s not getting anywhere.
Across the room, there’re three more doors along the walls. The two on the right have no visible light shining underneath. Those lead back into the theater. The one straight ahead has the last gasp of sunlight flickering across the foot of the carpet. That’s outside.
Gillian shoves the door open and we’re overwhelmed by the sudden expanse of space. Compared with the confining gray walls of the tunnels and the darkness of the Hall of Presidents, the bright openness of Liberty Square has me squinting through Disney’s fake Revolutionary-era town.
“Follow the crowd,” Charlie says, pointing toward the human wave of people flooding the streets. On my left, dozens of kids wait in line to stick their head through a fake stockade so their parents can snap a photo. On my right, hundreds of tourists line up for the world’s safest riverboat ride. Everyone else is in the streets – thousands of them milling toward the Old West township of Frontierland. It’s the week before Christmas in Disney World. Getting lost is the easy part.