Free Puddlejumpers by Christopher Carlson Mark Jean

the coons by their halters and pulled with all their might. Step by step, they inched the sled through the drifting snow until the runners got caught in an icy trough. Root yanked on their harness and Runnel pushed from behind, but the valiant coons couldn’t budge the sled.
    Out of the dark, a rising stench and a coarse breathing gripped Root’s spine. Runnel put her arms protectively around Shawn. They squinted into the raging snow and what they saw ended their last hope of escape. Four monstrous silhouettes, their tails arched overhead like scorpions ready to strike, emerged from the trees onto the frozen plain.
    Suddenly a mechanical drone and an eerie light penetrated the storm. Root, Runnel, and the Troggs all turned to look into the glare of an enormous eighteen-wheeler as it blasted out of the darkness like a ghostly phantom, its air horn blaring. With snow flying off its locked wheels, the truck skidded along the icy surface until it stopped just inches from the sled.
    The cab door, sporting the moniker Bleacher Bum, creaked open. A black man in his early fifties, wearing a Chicago Cubs baseball jacket and cap, descended from the cab. Joe Beason was a bear of a man with a day’s worth of stubble on a round face. He waded through the snow to the front of his rig. When he crossed through the headlight beams, he thought maybe his mind was playing tricks. There in front of him were four raccoons harnessed to a small sled buried in a snowdrift in the middle of the Interstate. No matter how hard he tried to explain it to himself, it just didn’t make any sense. And as much as he wanted to ignore the muffled cries coming from the bundle on the sled, he knew that he couldn’t. He reached down and tentatively opened the wool covering. It was a boy—wide-eyed, trembling, and completely naked but for something draped around his neck that looked like a crystal in the shape of an acorn. “Hell’s bells,” he mumbled, crossing himself. “Now I’ve seen everything.”
    A shrill hoot pierced the night.
    Beason felt the hair on his neck rise. He peered into the swirling snow, then shouted, “Hello? Anybody there?”
    An unearthly bellow answered.
    He buried his nose in his jacket sleeve. There was a stink he’d never smelled before and hoped he’d never smell again. Cussing under his breath, he opened his jackknife to cut the raccoons free from their harness, then hoisted the boy into the air. Shawn kicked and screamed with all his might.
    â€œSettle down now, I got you,” the trucker assured, tucking him inside his jacket. The raccoons crawled away as he hustled back to his rig. Whatever was out there, he had no intention of making its acquaintance.
    Beason pinned the wild child on the seat beside him, revved the engine, and eased the truck into gear. The gargantuan tires crushed the sled as the eighteen-wheeler plowed onward down the Interstate.
    The Troggs lurched onto the pavement, raging at the disappearing taillights. At the edge of the highway, beneath a road sign, NEXT EXIT, CIRCLE, Root and Runnel burrowed deep into the snow. They trembled in each other’s arms, devastated.
    The Puddlejumpers had lost their precious Rainmaker.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    Trouble Behind, Trouble Ahead
    F ORGING THROUGH the blizzard, Joe Beason shifted his gaze from the road to the urchin beside him babbling some crazy gibberish he couldn’t understand. Unnerved, he tugged his Cubs cap a little tighter and wondered what he’d gotten himself into. He picked up his radio mic to tell somebody, anybody, what had happened. All he got was static. Then he remembered. It was Christmas Eve and there wasn’t another truck on the road.
    â€œHooty-hoo!” cried Shawn, lunging for the door, but Beason yanked him back by the foot and pasted him against the seat with his big hand. “You stay right where you are, mister,” he warned. “I got enough problems without you