Gob's Arc

Chapter 3 of 11

Gob lay flat on the dead beacon tower. The saucers hunted the small glow in his mouth. He clamped his lips shut and held still. Then a horn blared below, deep and round, three notes at once. A fire truck raced across the burnt ground toward the keep. It should not have been there. Nothing worked in this dark. But there it came, ladder rattling, and four riders clung to its sides. Gob knew none of them. A chicken in a soldier's coat rode up front, a great brass sousaphone wrapped around her body. She was Sooza. When she blew the horn, three colors spilled from the bell at once, fire and frost and green shoots, braided into one sound. "Jump, little light!" she called. "The music holds them stupid for now!" The saucers wobbled. Her three quarreling elements, forced through one tube, jammed their beams. Gob did not know if he could trust them. But the saucers were turning back. He dropped from the tower and hit the truck's ladder. A teenage girl caught him, a hula hoop spinning at her hips. "Got him! Got him!" Hoola shouted. "Told you I'd catch him, told you!" At the wheel sat a tall woman with a blue tower of hair. She waved two bright pompoms and steered with her knees. "We drive now," PomPom said. "We talk later." A granny in a pink ballet dress spun on the truck's roof, arms out, holding balance against every bump. "Four turns," TooToo said, landing hard. "Not three. Four." A princess sat behind them, bow in hand, drawing it across her own long hair. The strands rang out. "I'm Rooba," she said, calm. "I'm opening a path through the fleet's signal. If I find the right note, their beams go blind." Her bow slid. One note screeched wrong. She frowned and tried again. A saucer broke free of Sooza's music. Its rim spun bright and swung at the truck. Gob felt the heat build. He opened his mouth and threw a hard flash of light straight up. The beam chased the bright thing, as it always did, and struck empty sky above them. The truck roared on beneath the burnt beam. Rooba's bow hit its note. The hair sang clear and low. Every saucer above them jerked, then drifted off course, hunting a signal that no longer led anywhere. The truck rolled clear of the keep and out onto open ground. Gob gripped the ladder and caught his breath. He had a truck now, and five strangers who had risked the beams for him. Ahead, past the drifting saucers, the hills waited where Fluroess and Potbelly still stood. "Plan C," Gob whispered. He had a way through. "Hoola. We're going to make it." But the fleet still crawled toward those hills, and it moved faster than one fire truck could.