Free Kingdom Keepers: The Syndrome by Ridley Pearson Page B

delight and sought out her husband to share the news.
    “You’ll watch him. Just watch him, yes?” she said. I got the message. She didn’t want me stealing any solo moments watching him drink.
    “Yeah. Sure.”
    “What is it?”
    “I didn’t say anything,” I protested.
    “I can hear it in your voice.”
    “It’s late,” I said. “That’s all.”
    “The boy.” She wasn’t asking.
    “Yes.”
    “You are not to open any windows.” Again, an order, not a suggestion.
    “Of course not!” I said.
    “I’ve locked all the doors. I don’t see how he’s supposed to pull this off.”
    “No. But I’m pretty sure he will. He’s not a deep thinker, Mrs. Whitman, if you know what I mean.”
    “I know exactly what you mean!”
    “We could outwit him, but more likely we need to beat him, defeat him.”
    “Win,” Finn’s mother said. She looked at me for a long moment. “You said you’re strong.”
    “I am. I can be.”
    “Can you fight?” Mrs. Whitman asked.
    I didn’t answer right away. She took that as uncertainty, which it was not.
    “Your strength,” she said, trying to give me confidence I didn’t need. “My brains. Hey, I’m a real-life rocket scientist. What chance does this Luowski
have?”
    “Not much,” I said, feeling better in spite of myself.
    “I’ll double check the doors,” she said.
    “Couldn’t hurt.”
    Waiting for Luowski slowed the clock to a crawl.
    Mrs. Whitman said something to herself about being “home alone,” which I didn’t understand. There were three of us, four, counting Finn. But after that, she brightened and put
me to work. We strung Mr. Whitman’s fishing line across the staircase, leaving a tennis ball on the carpet to mark the invisible line for ourselves. She loaded the room with a variety of
sporting equipment, from baseball bats to golf clubs. As it was dark out, I stood guard while she poured what remained of a five-gallon bucket of black sealant for the driveway around the base of
the tree below Finn’s window. Returning inside, she had me hold her feet while she worked with a handsaw on the only limb that neared the window.
    Inside the front door, she taped down two layers of black garbage bags, making sure the door would swing open without disturbing them. She seeded flakes of laundry detergent between the layers;
the combination had to be the slipperiest surface on earth. More fishing line made a second trip wire, which we tied to the plug of the only lamp left on downstairs. The family’s vintage
video camera, with its mounted spotlight, was positioned on the top landing with Mrs. Whitman, while I was left in possession of the newer digital camera.
    Mr. Whitman got into the act, too, by agreeing to be the radio man. At the first sign of any trouble, he would phone 911. He was also in possession of the only real weapon at our disposal. Mrs.
Whitman had cannibalized parts of a dog-training device for a dog the family no longer owned. Originally it had consisted of a shock collar and remote control button with which to activate it. Now
it took the form of a lacrosse stick with a barbecue fork duct taped to the end; the remote was taped on the stick’s handle. “Poke, stick, zap,” was how Mrs. Whitman told her
husband to operate it. She repeated the commands several times. Mr. Whitman practiced a lunge like the fencing champion he was not.
    The preparations brought him around. Instead of battling a coma, he had a real enemy to fight, and Mr. Whitman came to life, getting into it.
    It was approaching midnight by the time Mrs. Whitman brewed a stiff pot of tea for the team. We clinked cups—and then we waited.
    “If he doesn’t come,” Mr. Whitman said, his face alight with mirth, “we’re going to look like a sorry bunch of paranoid idiots.”
    As it turned out, that was the last time anyone laughed that night.
    The first suggestion of trouble came as I heard the snap of a tree branch outside Finn’s window. It was followed