Chapter 11

chapter eleven The enforcer starts to take a step forward, but her body jerks and jitters. She's still in the middle of analyzing me and Quint, and apparently she's not great at doing two things at once. Fair enough. I can never do the "pat your head and rub your belly at the same time" thing, and doing some sorta identi-scan while trying to grab Globlet looks a lot harder. Thinking back to all those old Westerns Dirk made us watch back in the tree house, I put on a country drawl, tip a nonexistent cowboy hat, and back away slowly. "It's been a pleasure, ma'am, but it's time for us to be getting along now." That's when the identi-scan finishes. A twitch runs through her body, like a warning signal. Then her eyes flash and—

alert. Other-dimensional creatures detected enforcers engage The enforcer barks, "SET PHASERS TO STUN—" Hey, stun? That's not too bad. I figured she was gonna say "incinerate" or something. "STUNNINGLY PAINFUL!" she finishes. Oh. Darn. "It's called a getaway! Not a stayput!" Globlet shouts, shoving her face through the open taxi door. "So let's gooooo." Quint scales the taxi's long fingers, and I scramble up behind him. The fingers are in desperate need of some lotion, and we use the rough skin like a ladder. I jam my foot into a callus the size of a basketball, use a knuckle as a final handhold, and hoist myself inside.

I expect to find Globlet flipping switches, powering up engines, checking coordinates. Instead, she's sitting calmly in the middle seat, slurping a drink the size of a football. I want to ask her a lot of questions—most of them some variation on "WHY ARE YOU WANTED BY THE MONSTER POLICE?" But for some reason, the question that pops out of my mouth is... where'd you get a soda? Came with the ride. Tastes like cherries and optimism. Suddenly, Seabiscuit stands, and everything sways. I'm thrown into a fleshy armrest, then go flipping over a

fleshy cupholder, and when I'm finally upright again, I'm sitting in the also-fleshy driver's seat. "Oh, good, I was hoping you'd want to drive," Globlet says, hopping up front. "My footises can't reach the scale-pedals." Actually, no, I don't want to, but I see the enforcer's glowing eye-beams shining into the cabin. And a trio of enforcers is on the road ahead, marching toward us. It's pretty clear I've got no choice. "Drive... Right, OK," I say, searching for the ignition or a button or something. "And I do that... how?" "You do it..." Globlet says. "With gusto!" Globlet grabs a long shard of bone that pokes through the cabin floor. It's like a gearshift, I realize, as Globlet pushes it forward. There's a squelching sound—then Seabiscuit lurches forward, swinging around, charging into the terminal. "Wrong direction!" I shout. "This is a getaway. That means we're supposed to be getting away!" "Fantastic!" Quint remarks. "I was hoping we'd get to see inside of the terminal during our tour." "IT'S NOT A TOUR!" I cry as I desperately jerk the wheel back and forth, trying—and mostly failing—to avoid hitting anything.

Seabiscuit gallops past landing platforms and heaps of wreckage and endless shops and stalls and emporiums. "Ooh, Pinky Palace," Globlet says, pointing. "That place has the best sammiches." "We should stop for some," Quint says. "If you two don't get serious, I WILL PULL THIS CAR OVER!" I roar. "Actually, I won't, 'cause I don't know how to and also 'cause we're being chased by an army of monster police. But, yeah... GET SERIOUS." Geez, somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I woke up in the wrong dimension in a river after almost getting my head torn off by a monster that's trying to kill me Globlet glances back at Quint, and they both giggle. I want to strangle them. I suddenly feel very guilty about

every time I horsed around in the back of some tired parent's car as they drove me home for car pool. Seabiscuit skids around a corner, swerving into a wide corridor. "A way out!" I say, pointing at a huge, arcing exit up ahead. I can see the daylight beyond. But much of that daylight disappears as enforcers begin to fill the opening. First three or four, and then a dozen of the glow-eyed monsters. They ride beasts, nightmarish mash-ups of machinery and musculature. The enforcers and their beasts move closer, forming a roadblock. And we're racing straight toward it. One enforcer tosses a snake creature into the path ahead of us. All along its back, its scales erupt into spikes—spikes that will shred Seabiscuit's finger-feet if we drive over them. I quickly scan our surroundings, looking for another way. "Just go, man!" Globlet says, tugging the bone-shift and hurtling Seabiscuit forward at runaway-freight-train speed. Meanwhile, Quint just stares out the window in fascination. "Look!" he exclaims, tapping the glass. "A remarkable time-telling device!"