Green Boy by Susan Cooper Read Free Book Online Page B

helicopter: two men in dark red jumpsuits, some kind of uniform. The helicopters rose again instantly, to hover higher up.
    I found myself knocked sideways, rolling, caught then by Annie’s outstretched arm. All four of them had dived behind the outer row of boulders, taking me with them.
    â€œPolice!” Gwen hissed in my ear. “Keep behind the rock!”
    â€œBut Lou—!”
    Bryn put his hand over my mouth and said in my ear, “We’ll get Lou. Just watch.”
    The two policemen, quick and intent, were running toward the rocks, toward Lou and the tree. We lost sight of them for a moment and then they reappeared on the edge of the outer circle of rocks, facing the ditch. They paused, uncertain, looking down at the sea of giant millipedes, piled still in mounds of shiny black coils. Even without movement, the sudden sight must have been awesomely nasty.
    Lou was standing beside the tree, his hand on its trunk, watching them. One of them called to him. “Hey kid—you’re in danger! Come on out of there!”
    Lou shook his head. He waved to them, smiling. I couldn’t believe how cool he was. Then he patted the trunk of the tree, almost as if he were telling it something, and he walked away from it, away from the men, toward the end of the inner group of rocks, facing us.
    One of the men yelled at him again, and took out something that looked like a gun, but the other knocked his hand down. The first man put the gun away and began, reluctantly, to clamber down into the ditch toward the silent millipedes. The other followed him. And two things happened at once, very fast, so fast that I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
    The instant both men were in the ditch, all the giant millipedes uncoiled, whipping their bodies straight, moving in absolute unison as if they were a school of fish. They seemed suddenly much bigger. Their snouty little heads were up, facing the two policemen. And both the men dropped like stones, and a second later, that strange isolated wind sprang up over the ditch, whirling the branches of the tree, blowing away from us, away from Lou.
    The millipedes swarmed slowly but relentlessly over the two bodies, covering them, but I knew the men had been dead the moment they fell. I’d been hearing Grand’s voice at the back of my memory, talking about the little black creatures we have at home. “They don’t sting—they don’t need to. They give off this little whiff of cyanide gas that kills their enemies. . . .”
    Not such a little whiff, when the millipedes became giants. And when the cyanide had killed the enemies, that wind had sprung up to blow it away from the friends.
    The sound of the helicopter engines grew louder again. Lou looked up. He was such a small unlikely figure there, in his T-shirt and shorts and raggedy sneakers.Overhead, the two helicopters were dropping out of the sky again toward us; they must have seen what had happened to the two policemen.
    â€œRun, Lou!” I shouted desperately, though he couldn’t have heard me.
    He slid into the ditch and patted the nearest of the giant millipedes on its shiny black back, just as he had at first, and then rapped on it lightly with his knuckles. And just as before, the creature curled itself obediently into a tight circle, and so did the next, and the next. As soon as there were enough of them to make a pathway across the seething black mass, Lou ran toward us, jumping from one coil to the next as if they were stepping stones. Bryn and Math pulled him out of the ditch as soon as he was across.
    â€œQuick!” We were all running back to the forest, as the helicopters dropped lower and lower.
    But the police seemed less interested in us than in the tree, the small ancient tree among the rocks, that had sung to Lou. The two helicopters hovered low over it for a moment. Then from each of them a brilliant ray of light flicked out, focusing on it, and instantly the