“What are you thinking?” Finn asked.
“I’m going to need a diversion,” Charlene whispered. “Something big. Something everyone will watch. And by everyone, I mean every last bird and caterpillar, and especially the people and bats”
36
INGENIOUS, FINN THOUGHT as he moved through the swinging doors and into the forward viewing booth. There were three levels of viewing offered at the bat enclosure, three open-air rooms constructed of dark wood that led the Park guest closer to the risk of contact with the flying rodents. The first viewing room offered glass windows; the middle room, screens; and the final room—more of a long booth—nothing but well-spaced vertical wooden bars to keep the large bats at bay. The bars were clearly wide enough for Finn to poke his head through, yet too narrow for the extended wings of the large African bats.
Finn kept his cap pulled down snugly, hoping to avoid being recognized; that was the kind of distraction he could do without. The viewing room was staffed by a college-age girl in a ranger’s uniform. Presently, she was answering the questions of two young boys who had too much energy for such a small space. Their mother seemed unwilling to contain them, which served Finn’s purpose well. He slipped the case off his father’s BlackBerry and stepped close to the open-air viewing windows, hoisting the phone to take a picture. He pressed up to the bars, a warm breeze striking him, and caught a fleeting and exasperated glance from the ranger, who was finding her patience taxed by the two boys.
Finn purposely fumbled with the phone and case, allowing the case to slip out of his hands and fall through the bars, down into the enclosure. He pocketed the phone.
“My case!” he shouted. He jumped up onto the sill and began to squeeze himself through the bars.
Finn was relatively slight of build. He actually got partway through the bars before the ranger’s strong hand grasped him by the upper arm.
“GET OUT OF THERE!!” the girl screamed at the top of her lungs, pulling on him. “YOU CAN’T GO IN THERE!!! ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?”
The effect was exactly what Charlene had hoped for: every human eye was drawn to Finn; some of the bats were spooked by the ranger’s admonishments. For a few precious seconds, the ranger pulled and Finn resisted.
“My case!” he hollered.
“GET DOWN FROM THERE!”
Finn stole one quick glance. Maybeck helped Charlene, on stilts, through the jungle door and into the enclosure. Charlene’s ivy-clad costume pushed up against the rocks at the far end of the enclosure, and within seconds a miracle occurred: she disappeared. DeVine’s costume fit into the environment so well that her form appeared as ivy growing up the rocks. There was no mistaking this whatsoever for a girl on stilts. The change was extraordinary.
Finn, apologizing and complaining at the same time, allowed himself to be drawn back into the viewing room, actually grateful for the ranger’s efforts, since the swirling bats swooped and dove too close for comfort. The ranger scolded him briefly, then promised to have his lost case retrieved. She tried to contact someone over her headset, but clearly there was no answer. She double-checked both the headset and the radio it was plugged into, obviously annoyed by the lack of response.
She blushed, apologized, and asked Finn to stick around. “I don’t know why I’m not getting anyone back there,” she said.
I do, Finn thought to himself. The people behind that door are not the people you normally work with. If they’re even people at all…
Once again, his eyes strayed to the far side of the enclosure, where he saw that the ivy patch on the rocks had migrated a few feet farther along, a yard or two closer to the enclosure’s center doors. Charlene was moving so incredibly slowly, so expertly, that it was impossible to detect her movements. The ivy seemed to be growing and extending all on its own, blending in perfectly with the ivy already there.
37
WITH HER BACK TO a false rock wall, Charlene watched Finn being grabbed by the ranger in the viewing booth. The girl stopped him from jumping into the enclosure, and then the two had words. Charlene thought that Finn seemed to be looking right at her a couple of times, and she wondered how good a job she was doing at blending in.
With her face painted camouflage green, white, and brown, only the whites of her eyes threatened to give her away; so Charlene tried to keep her eyes averted. But it wasn’t easy. Jangled by raw nerves, she inched her way along the wall, trying not to look at the bats. She hated bats, and the ones in the enclosure were the size of bowling pins: big, gray, winged rats, hanging upside down from clotheslines. As long as they kept their distance, she thought she could make it.
The only people who might spot her were those in the viewing station: the Park visitors and the ranger. When she did look up, it was toward the booth. She didn’t know if Amanda had a camera aimed at her, and she’d lost sight of Maybeck, who was somewhere off to her right near the jungle door. She was on her own: fenced in with several dozen giant bats, in a place that smelled…well, funky…trying to slow dance her way clear around the curve of the smooth, irregular rock wall to the center doors.
She inched a stilt to her left, stepped the other along, and then froze, allowing her vines to blend in with those growing on the rocks. Then, a minute or two later, she moved again. She and the vines crept ahead, no one the wiser.
Finn left the booth, and Maybeck appeared out on the path with him. They both glanced once in her direction. She saw Finn lift his DS, signaling for her that a text was coming.
Finn: can’t c u at all, Charlie, great job, we’re here if u need us.
The two boys walked off.
It was the first time Finn, or anyone else for that matter, had ever called her Charlie, and she actually liked the nickname. There was something pleasing about it, something incredibly personal that made her feel especially good about it. She hoped it might stick, providing she got out of here alive.
The left stilt caught on a rock as she moved, and the rock shot out from under it like a wet bar of soap, raising a puff of dust. This, in turn, startled the bats, already edgy from Finn’s distraction. Three of the ugly things flew straight for her, coming toward her face at incredible speed, flying close enough that she could see not only the black glass, buttonlike, beady eyes, but the tiny gray hairs that surrounded their ratty faces, and the eerie translucence of their wings. Her stomach knotted, her head swooned, and a scream bubbled up from her lungs. She kept silent only by snapping her lips shut and clenching her teeth. The last of the three brushed against her hair, dislodging a carefully placed plastic vine and causing a strand to fall into her eyes—undoing her disguise. If anyone looked directly at her now, they were sure to see a length of blond hair inexplicably sticking out from the ivy—and that couldn’t be good. She blew the hair out of her eyes with upturned lips and moved more quickly now, slipping her way around the curving rock wall and nearing the green doors at its center.
She was partially hidden by several trees as she neared the two doors, suddenly realizing that on stilts she was much too tall to fit through without Maybeck’s help. Being near the middle of the enclosure, she was also now the center of attention. Without her knowing it, the Park guests were looking directly at her.
She wasn’t going to get through those doors, and she’d come too far to turn back. She looked up: the rock wall rose high above her head, but though it was uneven and craggy, there were plenty of handholds visible. Charlene climbed the rock wall at her gym—she considered herself something of an expert.
The trick was getting her feet out of the stilts without being seen and then leaving the stilts propped against the rock so that she could return to them and effect her escape. She eased down into a squat—not an easy balancing act on stilts—and managed to release her left foot. She freed her right foot, too, and then carefully stepped out of both stilts to leave them resting against the fake rock wall. Some of the ivy strands that wrapped around the stilts continued higher and merged into those that surrounded her leotard. She managed to disconnect the tendrils one by one; far more were sewn to the leotard and remained part of her costume. These also helped disguise her as, by handhold and foothold, Charlene climbed higher up the rock face. With each small ascent she paused for what felt like a very long time, allowing her vines to combine with rock and make it more difficult to spot her. She was helped out by the trees and vegetation between her and the viewing booth. But soon she rose above the crown of the nearest tree, clinging to the odd texture of the fake rock and staying close to the line of real ivy to help camouflage her.