On the Run Page 6

  Cody looked over to him. “You okay?”

  Zach stared into the bag but said nothing.

  “Yo, Zach.”

  Finally, Zach spoke. “I thought you said there was only half a burger here.”

  Before Willard could answer, Zach pulled out an entire hamburger. Then he reached in and pulled out another. And another.

  For the first time in his life, Zach was speechless.

  Piper reached across the aisle and grabbed the bag. She stuck her hand inside . . . and pulled out another!

  “I don’t get it,” Willard said. “Where did I get those?”

  Without a word, Piper passed the bag to Cody.

  Cody took it and pulled out one, two, three bags of French fries.

  No one said a word.

  Piper nervously coughed. Finally she cleared her throat and asked, “So . . . anybody want to say grace?”

  Dad had wiggled out of the ropes and was helping Mom get free.

  “There we go,” he said as he pulled her last rope away. He reached to her arm and gently helped her to her feet. “You okay?”

  She nodded, rubbing her wrists. “You?”

  “Yeah.” He moved across the room quickly and tried the door.

  Locked.

  No surprise there.

  “Now what?” Mom asked.

  He looked to the ceiling, to the walls, searching for any type of opening, any type of air duct.

  Nothing.

  Mom had moved to a shelf of stationery supplies.

  “Maybe there’s something here.”

  He turned to her. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. But we’ve got to do something.”

  Without another word, she reached for the nearest box and started to tear it open. Dad crossed the room and joined her.

  Willard looked over the mass of wires and duct tape that led from the helio-hopper battery on the RV’s kitchen table to the RV starter, and back to the RV’s battery. “I believe we are ready for our first test.”

  “It better be a good one,” Zach said as he pulled away from the window, “’cause they’re headed back this way!” He turned to Piper and motioned for her to shut off the flashlight.

  She nodded, but was too late.

  Outside, the heavier male voice asked, “Did you see that?”

  “A light in the RV!” the other man answered.

  “Let’s get ’em!” the first cried. Louder, he shouted, “We found ’em, Monica! They’re in the RV!”

  Get down, Zach motioned to everyone in the motor home. Down.

  The door suddenly rattled. Zach had luckily had the good sense to lock it.

  “A rock!” one of the men shouted. “Get that rock!”

  There was a moment’s silence. Then, a rock smashed the right door’s window directly above Piper’s head.

  Piper gave a stifled scream and everyone stopped breathing.

  The rock hit the window again . . . and again, until finally the glass exploded.

  Piper cried out as glass rained down all over her.

  A hand reached inside, trying to unlock the door.

  “What do we do?” Willard yelled.

  “The only thing we can do!” Zach shouted. He jumped behind the wheel of the RV.

  The hand had nearly found the lock. Without stopping to think, Piper pulled off her shoe and slammed the hand with it.

  The man yelled in pain and the hand disappeared.

  Zach tried the engine. There was a very faint whine, then nothing.

  Everyone groaned.

  The hand came back inside.

  Piper hit it again, and again, as hard as she could.

  But this time, it remained.

  “It must work!” Willard exclaimed. “Everything is in place.” Only then did he see Elijah pointing to a loose wire.

  “Yes!” Willard lunged forward and reattached it. Finally, the hand found the lock. Quickly, it unlocked the door.

  Again, Zach turned the key. This time the engine sputtered to life . . . just as the door flew open.

  The big man reached inside. Piper was the closest, and he managed to grab hold of her sweatshirt. She screamed, trying to break away, but it did little good.

  He had her.

  Cody leaped into action. He plowed into the man as hard as he could. The man gasped and lost hold of Piper as Zach dropped the RV into gear and hit the gas.

  Tires spun, spitting mud and gravel. The RV drifted to the right until Zach fought the wheel and straightened it.

  The man’s arms and head were still inside as he ran, trying to keep up.

  The side gate lay dead ahead.

  Zach pushed the pedal to the floor.

  Piper screamed as they crashed through the gate, stripping the man away, while driving right over what was left of Willard’s helio-hopper.

  They bounced onto the street as Cody shut the door.

  Piper raced to the back and looked out the window. She saw the two men and the woman racing for their green van.

  “They’re coming after us!” she yelled.

  “Let ’em,” Zach shouted as he looked in the rearview mirror. “No way will they catch us!”

  Chapter Seven

  The Hospital

  Zach swerved crazily down the city street.

  “Watch out!” Piper shouted as he barely missed his fourth (or was it fifth) parked car.

  “This thing drives like a house!” Zach complained.

  “You don’t even have your license!” Piper cried.

  “Details, details.”

  “You barely know how to drive!”

  “Relax,” he said with a grin. “It’s just like a video game.”

  “Video games give you three crashes for a dollar!”

  Zach turned to her. “How much money we got?”

  “Stop joking!”

  Zach continued to laugh. He could be so clever sometimes. At least he thought he could.

  “Look out!” Piper cried as they drifted into the wrong lane. (Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, except for the cement truck heading straight for them.)

  “Zach!”

  He turned just in time and yanked the wheel hard to the right so they barely missed crashing into it.

  The mailbox on the other side of the road wasn’t so lucky. Nor was the rosebush, or the pink plastic flamingos arranged on the front lawn. Well, they had been on the front lawn. Now they were crunching under the RV’s tires, flying over the RV’s roof, or hitching a free ride on the RV’s bumper.

  Once the fun and games were over, they bounced back onto the street and continued their little suicide ride.

  “Excuse me,” Willard interrupted, holding up his handheld computer. “If my calculations are correct, they will be catching up with us in roughly one minute and thirty-two seconds.”

  “Willard’s right,” Cody agreed. “There’s no way we can outrun them in this thing.”

  “So what do we do?” Piper asked.

  Willard answered. “Since the RV is so visible, I suggest we hide it.”

  “But where?”

  Suddenly, Zach threw the RV into a hard left, tossing everyone to the side.

  “Zach, what are you — ” Then Piper saw it. He’d found an underground parking lot and was racing inside.

  “They’ll never find us here,” he shouted.

  “Uh, excuse me, Zach?” Willard called. “What is the maximum clearance of this structure and what is our vehicle’s height?”

  “Huh?”

  Before he could repeat himself, the RV gave a sickening shudder as its plastic sky light was sheered off by one of the low-hanging concrete beams in the garage ceiling.

  Zach hit the brakes and threw them all forward to the floor.

  “Oh no!” Piper groaned. She staggered back to her feet. “Did you just do what I think you did?”

  “Perhaps we should ascertain the damages,” Willard suggested.

  “Yeah,” Zach agreed. “Perhaps we should.”


  As they stepped from the RV, Piper spotted a sign that read Eastwood Hospital Parking.

  “Well, at least we know where we are,” she said.

  They boosted Zach up to the top of the RV to see what had happened.

  “Doesn’t look too bad,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Where did all these pieces of flamingos come from?”

  “What about the RV?” Piper asked. “Is the RV okay?”

  “The roof might leak a bit, but we could stuff a blanket in to stop that.”

  Willard and Cody helped Zach back down as Piper asked, “So what’s our plan now?”

  “Go to the police?” Cody offered.

  Zach shook his head. “Kids against adults — who do you think they’d believe?”

  Piper nodded. “Especially when one of those kids has just stolen an RV, illegally driven it, and crashed it into a parking-garage ceiling.”

  “Hey,” Cody asked, “where’s your little brother?”

  Piper glanced around. He was nowhere in sight.

  “Eli?” Zach stuck his head into the RV. “Little buddy, you in here?”

  Nothing.

  “Where could he have gone?” Piper asked. She tried unsuccessfully to keep the fear out of her voice. “You don’t think that they, they — ”

  “We’d have seen them, Pipe,” Zach said. “Nobody grabbed him. But why would he just slip off ?”

  Piper glanced up at the Eastwood Hospital Parking sign. “Wait a minute.”

  “What?” Cody asked.

  “Earlier today,” she turned to Zach, “remember he wanted to go visit a hospital?”

  “So?” Zach asked.

  “So maybe he’s doing that now.”

  Zach began to nod slowly.

  “But why?” she asked.

  “Why does he do half the things he does?” Zach said.

  Piper shrugged. He had a point.

  “Perhaps we should commence searching for him?”

  Willard offered.

  No one disagreed. But nobody suggested how to begin either.

  Finally, Cody spoke up. “Why don’t Willard and I check out everywhere on this block.”

  Zach nodded. “I’ll check the block across the street and behind us.”

  Cody continued. “And Piper, why don’t you look in the hospital?”

  “But what if . . .” Piper’s voice was suddenly clogged with emotion. “What if we can’t find him?” She looked down, letting her hair drop over her face.

  Cody waited until she looked back up. Then, holding her eyes, he said softly, “We’ll find him, Piper. Don’t worry. We’ll find him.”

  “But what if — ” Her voice cracked and she couldn’t continue.

  Ever so gently, he put an arm around her. Then he turned to the group. “Let’s all meet back here in one hour. If we don’t find him by then . . .” He hesitated. “Then we’ll call the police.”

  Five minutes later, Piper arrived at the Information Desk in the hospital lobby. A silver-haired woman was frantically answering phones while pointing out directions to various visitors.

  “Excuse me?” Piper asked. “Excuse me?”

  A third phone rang. The woman motioned for Piper to wait as she answered it.

  Piper blew the hair out her eyes and glanced around the lobby. The place was huge, and modern art covered the walls. In the middle of the room stood the world’s ugliest statue. She couldn’t figure out if it was supposed to be a spiderweb, a boney hand, or some stringy alien spacecraft visiting from another planet.

  It made no difference. Piper was not crazy about visiting hospitals. Actually, it wasn’t the hospitals, it was the people suffering in them. She’d never forget the time she volunteered as a candy striper. On her first day of the job, a nurse asked her to help change the dressing on an old man’s wound.

  It wasn’t too bad — just a deep gash along his belly where a piece of metal had dug in from a car crash. And Piper didn’t have to do any of the work. All she had to do was hold the bandages as the nurse unwound them.

  No problem.

  The problem came when they peeled back the old bandages and Piper saw the open wound. Actually, it wasn’t the “seeing” that was the problem . . . it was the getting sick to her stomach, the feeling her face break out in a sweat, and the fainting right there onto the floor that was a bit embarrassing.

  When she woke up, the nurse was helping her to her feet.

  “Sweetheart, are you okay?” she’d asked.

  Of course, Piper had pretended nothing was wrong, that she’d tripped or stumbled or something. And she might have pulled it off . . .

  Except for the part of seeing the open wound again, breaking out in a sweat again, and, you guessed it, hitting the floor again.

  So much for her career in the medical field.

  “May I help you?”

  The voice drew her out of her memories and back into the lobby. She looked at the silver- haired lady and cleared her throat. “Did you see a little boy come in here? Six years old, dark hair, and glasses that are — ”

  “Is he lost?”

  “Well, no. I mean, maybe. I don’t know.”

  The woman’s smile froze slightly.

  Realizing how lame she sounded, Piper tried again.

  “Actually, I’m not even sure he’s here.”

  The frozen smile cracked slightly.

  Luckily, another phone rang. The woman reached for it and answered it. “Good afternoon, Eastwood Hospital. How may I help you?” Then another rang. “Would you hold, please? Good afternoon, Eastwood Hospital. How may I help you?”

  Piper glanced around. It was pretty obvious that the only way she could find Elijah was to look for him herself. With a sigh, she turned from the desk and started for the elevators. But she’d only taken a few steps before she heard, “Miss . . . Miss.”

  She turned to see the woman at the desk calling to her. “I’m sorry, but children are not allowed to visit without an adult.”

  “Child? I’m no child. I’m almost — ”

  “Sorry, those are the rules.” The phone rang again, and she answered it. “Good afternoon, Eastwood Hospital, how may I help you?”

  Across the lobby, the doors to the elevator opened. For a second, Piper thought of racing onto it — rules or no rules. But knowing the woman was keeping an eye on her, and that she had broken more than the daily minimum requirement of rules for one day, Piper turned and slowly started for the exit.

  With each step she took, her heart grew heavier. Things were finally catching up with her — leaving the house, losing Mom and Dad, and now . . . her baby brother. Why was everything so hard? What was the big secret her parents kept hiding from her? And why, just when things started to get normal, did stuff like this always happen?

  She stepped out the hospital doors and into the sunlight. Tears filled her eyes. She blinked them back.

  She would not cry. Not now. Not when Elijah needed her. She swallowed hard, then thought back to the Bible verse Mom and Dad had left them: “I am with you always.”

  It sure didn’t feel like anybody was with her. It felt more like she was lost and alone. Very, very alone.

  “Where are you, God?” she whispered to herself.

  “Where are — ”

  “Excuse me?”

  She turned and saw an old man holding his chest, leaning against the building.

  “I think . . . I’m . . . having a heart attack,” he said.

  Piper rushed to his side.

  “Hospital,” he gasped. “I must get to — ”

  “It’s here!” she said. She searched the building. “You just passed the emergency exit. It’s back there!”

  The man turned, but could barely stand.

  “C’mon.” She slipped her shoulder under his arm. “I’ll help you!”