A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #4) - Ransom Riggs Page 0,81
had lasted about fifteen seconds.
“Holy Mother of Moses!” I heard Adelaide shout, and I turned to see him watching from the doorway of his bungalow.
Potts was cheering and cackling in his wheelchair. A few doors down, a woman peeked out of her room—had to be the baroness, because she was wearing a sparkly dress and long white gloves—and she sang out, “Thank Goooooooooood!” in a quivering vibrato.
“Uh-oh,” Bronwyn said, peeking under the car. “Are they dead?”
“Close enough,” Emma said, giving the short one a nudge with her foot.
Miss Billie emerged from behind the trash cans, trailed by her three shivering poodles. “There was a third one,” she said. “Little skinny fella.”
“Watch ouuuuuuuuut!” sang the baroness.
She was pointing one of her gloved hands toward the loop exit. We heard feet pounding pavement. The third man had jumped from wherever he’d been hiding and was bombing toward the loop exit.
“STOP!” Emma shouted, and started after him.
The guy looked back once, terrified. Then he seemed to make a decision, and he pulled a gun from his waistband and turned to face us.
“Git on the ground!” he shouted at us. “Don’t move a muscle!”
We put up our hands and did as he asked. From the corner of my eye, I saw Miss Billie dig something out of her purse. “Here you go, sweeties!” she said in the high-pitched voice she used with her dogs.
The man spun and pointed his gun at her, but when he saw her poodles, he laughed. “You gonna sic them little things on me? You done lost yer mind, lady. Now, git on the ground over there with the rest of ’em.”
Miss Billie raised her hands and walked toward us. Her poodles yipped and scarfed the treats.
The man came toward us, cautious, his stiff arms shaking with adrenaline. He saw what we’d done to his friends, and he looked ready to do worse to us.
“I’ll have the keys to that there automobile,” he said. “Somebody toss ’em at me.”
Enoch took the keys from his pocket and threw them. They landed on the pavement near the man’s feet.
“Good. Now I’ll take any money you got.”
My mind was racing, trying to figure out how we could get out of this. Maybe if we could trick him somehow, lure him closer, then jump him. But, no. He’d seen what happened to his friends when they let the girls get near them, and he wasn’t going to make the same mistake.
“Now!” he screamed, and fired his gun into the air. I flinched, my whole body tensing. I hadn’t heard a gun fired in months, and I wasn’t used to it.
I told him I had a few hundred dollars in the car.
“Go git it.”
Slowly, keeping my hands raised, I got up. “I need the keys. The money’s locked in the glove box.”
“Yer a damned liar. I should shoot you right now.” He was inching closer to me, closing the gap between us. “Fact, I think I will.”
Miss Billie put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. The man spun and pointed his gun at her. “Hey, lady, what the hell you think yer—”
And then came a loud, low-pitched panting, and from behind one of the bungalows galloped one of Miss Billie’s poodles—only it was twenty times larger than it had been three minutes earlier, the size of a full-grown hippopotamus.
The man turned, screamed, and aimed his gun at the giant dog. “Shoo! Go on now! Shoo!”
Then the other two dogs appeared, jumping out from between another pair of bungalows and growling like a pair of truck engines. He whirled toward them, and the second his back was turned, the first dog leapt, jaws wide and teeth gleaming, and bit his head off. What remained of him went limp and fell to the ground.
“Good girl! Good girl!” Miss Billie cried, clapping her hands.
Everyone in the Flamingo began to cheer. My friends got up off the ground.
“My bird,” said Bronwyn. “What kind of dogs are those?”
“Colossus poodles,” Miss Billie answered.
One of them trotted toward me with its mouth open, and I put my arms out and fell back a few steps. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, I think he’s still hungry!”
“Don’t run, he’ll think it’s a game!” said Miss Billie. “He’s just bein’ friendly.”
The dog’s tongue came at me like a huge pink surfboard and licked my head from neck to scalp. I think I squealed. I was left dripping and grossed out, but grateful to be alive.