Paraworld Zero (8 page)

    “So what world did you say you were from?” the manager asked Tonya as she
squirmed in her seat.

Chapter 5
    

    

    Tonya grabbed her paratransmitter and dove under the table. Simon started to
apologize, “I’m so sorry about—” but he was jerked to the floor. “
This!
” he yelped.

    They sprinted towards the exit, but halfway there, a tall server holding a
tray of food walked into their pathway. Tonya collided with the man, and they both fell in a
heap. French fries flew in every direction. Tonya picked up a sandwich from the floor and took a
bite.

    “Oh, I should’ve ordered one of these,” she said, taking another bite.

    “Come on!” Simon yelled. He pulled the girl to her feet.

    The loud music in the cafe blared wildly as Simon and Tonya made their way to
the front door.

    “Hold it right there,” growled the manager. His large fingers clamped down
onto Tonya’s shoulder from behind. Instinctively, the teenager flung her arm to get loose, and
the manager sailed across the room as though a great, invisible giant had just smacked him. He
landed on a table, splitting it in half, and sent food into the air.

    “Sorry!” Simon shouted before exiting the building.

    A dozen men dressed in green fatigues marched in their direction. “We are in
so much trouble,” Simon moaned.

    “This way,” Tonya said. In the bright sunlight, Simon noticed her hair color
had changed into a fiery red.

    They ran down the street and took a sharp right. The road ahead seemed clear
of danger, so they sprinted for two more blocks. Just as they reached the end of the third block,
however, another group of army men spotted them.

    Simon looked behind and saw the other party of soldiers approaching fast.
Frantic and scared, he scanned the area for cover. In less than a minute, they would be
surrounded.
Maybe it’s for the best
, he thought. Then realization dawned on him: If he was sent back
to the foster home, Butch would be there, waiting for him. With renewed vigor, Simon prepared to
run. Suddenly, Tonya grasped her stomach and fell to her knees.

    “What’s wrong?” cried Simon.

    “I feel nauseous.”

    “We have to go now!” Simon snapped. “If they catch us, who knows what they’ll
do to us?”

    He pulled Tonya to her feet and forced her to run across the busy road. A
barricade formed behind them as cars and trucks from every lane crashed into each other. Tonya
turned around and uttered a spell. A layer of slick ice crept over the street and sidewalk,
causing the soldiers and pedestrians to fall. Some of the people tried to clamber on all fours,
but to no avail. The ice continued up the buildings and even made the birds slip from their
perches.

    “Wow,” Simon whispered.

    The two children continued running until they found a row of parked cars.
Tonya hobbled from car to car, trying to find one that wasn’t locked.

    “What are you doing?” Simon yelled.

    “We need to borrow one of these motorized contraptions,” she cried. “I can’t
run any longer—something’s wrong with me. My whole body hurts.”

    “Are you crazy? We can’t just borrow a car.”

    Tonya approached an expensive-looking sports car, and a digital voice warned,
“
Please step away from the vehicle.
”

    “What is this?” she asked in shock.

    The voice spoke again while Tonya jiggled the door handle. “
You have ten seconds to leave the vicinity before an alarm goes off.
”

    “I think we’d better go,” Simon said, eyeing the black exterior.

    “Let me see here,” Tonya said. She pulled up her tunic a little and revealed
a small wand attached to her bare leg with a white garter belt.

    
So that’s where she’s been keeping it,
Simon thought.

    The car counted down:
“Five… Four… Three
…”

    Tonya took her wand, tapped the keyhole in the door, and said loudly, “
OPEN!
”

    To the surprise of both, the roof of the car peeled away like a banana and
flung itself to the ground with a loud clank.

    “Oops,” Tonya said, looking at the convertible she had just made. “I didn’t
mean to do that. I was just trying to pick the lock.”

    She climbed over the door and hopped into the driver’s seat. The inside of
the car was decked out with speakers, a DVD-equipped television, voice-activated controls, and a
top-of-the-line global positioning system.

    “Get in.”

    “We shouldn’t be doing this,” Simon whined.

    Ignoring him, Tonya placed her paratransmitter onto the leather seat next to
her and tapped the steering wheel with her wand. The car jumped ferociously as if it were
alive.

    “
Please fasten your seat belts,
” the computer system prompted.

    “Thank you,” Tonya said. She put on her seat belt and turned to look at
Simon. A group of soldiers had found them. “Get in, Simon!”

    With little time remaining, Simon leapt headfirst into the back seat of the
car. Tonya slammed the gas pedal to the floor. The sports car lurched forward and sped off down
the street like a rabbit in heat.

    “Don’t worry, Simon,” she called back to the boy being tossed around. “I
watched real closely when Abu was driving us.”

    “
AAAH!”
Simon yelled as she veered to the side and bumped into a parked car. “That’s just
what we need: driving lessons from a cab driver!” He fumbled with the seat belt, but it wouldn’t
fasten.

    “Wow, this isn’t as easy as it looks,” she said, stopping the vehicle three
times in quick succession.“No wonder a car smashed into the rock cafe.”

    Simon rolled his eyes. He pictured in his mind the ornamental car that used
to protrude from the previous Hard Rock Cafe building.

    Tonya moved slowly into the flow of traffic. “You know, I must admit, I
didn’t see any rocks in the cafe, soft or hard.”

    Suddenly, a person dressed in a dark overcoat hopped into the back seat of
the convertible.

    “How’s it going, punk?” Butch asked menacingly.

    Tonya gasped at seeing the young man in the rearview mirror. By this time,
she had merged fully into the stream of traffic and was too scared to slow down or take her hands
off the wheel. Haphazardly, she wove in and out of her lane, nearly hitting an 18-wheel diesel
truck.

    “Butch, what are you doing here?” shouted Simon over the roar of the
engine.

    “I just happened to be in the neighborhood, and I thought I’d drop in.”

    The sound of police sirens filled their ears as the wheels of the car
squealed through a red light. The digital voice warned, “
You are approaching a street light.
”

    “You’re a little slow, car,” Tonya teased.

    “
Caution, you are driving twenty-seven miles per hour over the speed limit,
” the car
retorted.

    “Keep driving,” Butch said.

    “What do you want from us?” Tonya cried. She brushed several long strands of
red hair out of her face.

    Butch grabbed a handful of curly hair and pulled the frightened girl to the
back of her seat. “I want that transmitter thing you’ve got,” he said coldly in her ear. Tonya
strained to reach the gas pedal, but Butch held her back. The sports car began to slow
down.

    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she screamed.

    “Don’t lie to me,” Butch spat. “I heard you talking about it when you were
hiding in the dumpster.”

    With her back pressed against the seat, Tonya could barely hold onto the
steering wheel. The car swerved into the opposing lane.

    Tonya struggled to free herself from Butch’s grasp.
“Let—go—of—me!” She released the steering wheel entirely and pointed her wand behind her.
A sparkling stream of light shot out of the wand and missed Butch’s head by inches. He let go of
her hair.

    She forced the car back into the right lane. With one hand on the wheel and
another clutching her wand, the young girl sprayed out a barrage of spells, but none of them made
contact with Butch.

    The two boys ducked in their seats as Tonya flailed her arm around wildly.
She hit a fire hydrant with one beam of light, then a dumpster, and then some metal trash cans at
the edge of the curb.

    The sports car ran over a pothole in the road, causing everyone to fall back
into their seats. Tonya inadvertently sent a stream of magical light into the sky, which
scattered a flock of pigeons that had been nestling on a window ledge above.

    A large semi-truck started to cross the intersection in front of them.
Gasping in horror, Tonya dropped her wand in her lap, reeled the car to the left, and whizzed
past the truck. The police followed suit, forcing the semi to jackknife onto the sidewalk.
Pedestrians scattered for their lives.

    

    

    A Cocker Spaniel barked ferociously at the fire hydrant that had been
previously hit by one of Tonya’s out-of-control spells. The red fire hydrant vibrated with harsh
grinding sounds. Suddenly, the cylinder of metal stretched itself ten feet into the air. The top
part of the fire hydrant split open and formed a gaping mouth full of sharp, metallic teeth. It
thrashed around like a snake for a few seconds and then, without warning, came crashing down onto
the poor dog below—swallowing it whole.

    While this was happening, a short, stubby man eating a hot dog walked up to
his immaculately clean car and pulled off a parking ticket that a police officer had placed under
his wiper blade.

    “Oh,
crud,
” he mumbled to himself as he crumpled up the piece of paper.

    Just then, a small bird-dropping splattered on his clean windshield.
Extremely perturbed, the man began to wipe off the mess with his ticket.

    An ominous, dark shadow loomed overhead and made a loud warbling sound as it
passed by. The unsuspecting man looked up to see what it was, and, at that very moment, a shower
of white bird turd completely drenched him and his beautiful car. Revolted by the pungent smell
and feeling absolutely disgusted, he wiped his face and attempted to open his eyes.

    The horrible noise of crunching metal sounded from behind. When the man
turned around, he saw a humongous pigeon perched on the top of his car, sagging the roof with its
weight. Before he could scream, the bird snatched the hot dog out of his trembling hand and
swallowed it in one bite.

    Nauseated with fear, the short man stumbled backwards, away from the enormous
bird. The pigeon twitched its head back and forth and hopped to the ground, but before it had
even landed, the man’s tiny car was propelled forward by the impact of something large. A massive
dumpster had crashed into the vehicle. It chomped down on the hood like a dog consuming a bone.
Two hefty legs of metal lifted the dumpster off the ground and allowed it to move about with
incredible agility. Presumably, the dumpster had intended to gobble up the oversized bird but,
instead, ripped the car apart with its powerful jaws.

    After pulverizing the vehicle, the dumpster sprang into the air and landed on
a minivan nearby. The windshield and side windows burst from the excessive weight.

    Silver trash cans with legs of their own ran through the street like chickens
with their heads cut off. One by one, the dumpster squashed the little cans under its doglike
claws. Just after crushing the last trash can, it spotted the gigantic pigeon hopping away.

    The dumpster knocked over a newspaper stand and bumped into parked cars while
chasing the bird down the street. People fled in hysteria. Suddenly, the pigeon turned around,
opened its beak wide, and sprayed a hot flame from its mouth towards the spastic dumpster. Badly
scorched and starting to melt, the dumpster took one last leap towards the large bird, but the
pigeon jumped into the air and flew off.

    The animated fire hydrant, now extending thirty feet from the concrete,
squirted water at the cars as they passed by. Seeing the singed dumpster not too far away, the
metallic snake coiled and struck, piercing right through the dumpster’s thick walls.

    The dumpster rolled on the ground to get away, but this only hindered its
escape; the movement simply allowed the fire hydrant to wrap itself around its prey more
efficiently. Lying on its side, the dumpster’s metallic feet kicked violently as the fire hydrant
squeezed the life out of the metal box. The walls began to warp from the pressure, and the hinges
began to buckle. In a desperate fit of rage, the dumpster seized the head of the fire hydrant
with its huge jaws and clamped down tightly until, a moment later, both entities lay motionless
on the ground.