Oh, that’s right. Break the rules. It was strange how much relief Jonah felt, realizing that was possible.
Mr. Hodge jumped down from the stairs and began leading the group through a hallway and out a door at the back of the school. Jonah let about a dozen kids file out ahead of him; he could see them stretched out across the yard in the sunshine, headed for the woods of the nature preserve. It was a cheerful scene, but Jonah got chills watching. It reminded him of something, something from when he was a little kid….
The Pied Piper, he thought. He and Katherine had had a book of fairy tales when they were little. She had loved it, but he had hated it, because of one illustration that frightened him: the one of the Pied Piper leading the children of Hamelin to their doom. In the picture the children were skipping and laughing and dancing to the piper’s tune, but Jonah knew what was going to happen to them. He couldn’t stand for them to be so happy when they ought to be scared.
Mr. Hodge isn’t playing any music, Jonah reminded himself. He’s not magical. He can’t force us to do anything we don’t want to do.
And yet Jonah was following him, pushing his way out the door….
“We’ve got to warn the other kids,” Jonah murmured to Chip and Katherine.
Katherine looked startled, but Chip nodded and fell back to talk to the boy behind them.
“I’m Chip Winston,” he heard Chip say softly. “I called you a few weeks ago—have you gotten any more strange letters?”
No! That approach would take too long! What if they had only a few more minutes?
Jonah sped up and fell into step with the girl ahead of them. He didn’t even take the time to glance at her name tag, to see if she’d been on their survivors list or not.
“You can’t trust Mr. Hodge or Gary,” he muttered. “Pass it on.”
She gave him an Are you crazy? look and pointedly did not step forward to talk to anyone else.
Jonah sighed and stepped up to the next kid himself.
“You can’t trust Mr. Hodge or Gary,” he whispered quickly. “We’re in danger. Be careful.”
Jonah reached three more kids before he felt a hand on his shoulder, just as they were about to step into the woods. It was Gary, who’d rushed up from the end of the line.
“Didn’t you hear the instructions?” he hissed in Jonah’s ear. “This is the silent part of the walk. If you can’t follow directions, you’ll have to stay at the back of the line with me.”
So they stood at the edge of the woods while all the other kids filed past. Katherine shot Jonah a white-faced worried look as she walked by, but there was nothing she could do.
Chip didn’t even glance in Jonah’s direction.
Good, Jonah thought. Pretend you don’t know me. Then they won’t be watching you, and you can give out the rest of the warnings….
He could feel the weight of Gary’s hand still on his shoulder, heavier than it should be, holding him in place. Finally the last kid walked past, and Gary let go.
“Okay, your turn,” Gary said quietly. “But remember—no more talking!”
How could Jonah talk when Gary was right behind him, watching?
Despairing, Jonah trudged forward. He could see the other kids snaking along the trail ahead of him, going deeper and deeper into the woods. Jonah had managed to talk to only five of them. Even if Chip reached all the others, would they believe him? What could they do, anyhow?
After about a mile, Jonah realized that Mr. Hodge was gathering everyone together at the front of the line.
“Circle up,” he called out.
He was standing on a rock now, so they could all see him. Jonah joined the back of the crowd and tried to inconspicuously angle himself away from Gary, toward Katherine and Chip. Gary didn’t try to hold Jonah back, but Jonah could feel his eyes on him.
“Few people know this, but there’s a rather extensive cave back here, right off the path,” Mr. Hodge was saying. “It’s one of the best-kept secrets of Clarksville. It’s usually off-limits to the public, but we’ve received special permission to take all of you in. We’ll talk about your identities in the cave.”
Did those words sound ominous to anyone else? Jonah looked around, but most of the kids just looked bored and distant, as if this was a particularly dull class at school.
Mr. Hodge bent down, ready to scramble down from the rock, but then he straightened up again.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said. “There’s a really interesting rock formation, right as you enter the cave. I forget the exact scientific explanation, but there’s something odd about the composition of the rock, so if you spread your hand out and touch it in the right spot, you can feel one patch of the stone that’s about fifteen degrees colder than the rest of the rock. It’s very bizarre. I’ll show you where to touch as we’re going in.”
Then he hopped down from the rock and led them downhill, down a winding offshoot trail toward a crevice behind the rock.
“Touch right here,” he instructed the first boy behind him, a gangly kid who kept tripping over his own feet. Mr. Hodge pointed to an outcropping along a towering stone wall. “Spread your fingers out—feel it?”
“Uh, yeah,” the boy said, sounding surprised.
“Now, you go on through there, and you can sit on one of the benches at the back of the cave,” Mr. Hodge said. “Next?”
Jonah watched a girl repeat the same process. After barely a second with her hand against the wall, she jerked back.
“Ow!”
“Oh, you couldn’t have felt it that quickly,” Mr. Hodge said. “It doesn’t hurt. Here. I’ll show you.”
He took her hand and pressed it against the rock once more.
“See?” Mr. Hodge said.