Leven Thumps and the Ruins of Alder by Skye Obert

Leven Thumps and the Ruins of Alder by Skye Obert

Author:Skye, Obert [Skye, Obert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 1606417355
Publisher: Deseret Book Company
Published: 2009-11-29T17:00:00+00:00


Chapter Twenty-Five

Picking Yourself Out in a Lineup

The population of the world is somewhere around six point four billion. That number is so large that it really is hard to comprehend. Let’s see if this helps: If you took six point four billion ferrets and laid them end to end, you’d probably hear from some animal rights group and be sued for six billion dollars for being mean to ferrets.

Six point four billion is a huge number.

Of course, it seemed as if all six point four billion people were now gathered in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, and that wasn’t including the population of Foo—the hundreds of thousands of refugees that had now successfully worked through the waterway and climbed into Reality. The highways were clogged, the skies were filled with helicopters and jets, and the sounds of engines and voices and sirens and tanks permeated the surroundings. There were thousands of RVs, dozens of news crews, hundreds of black limos containing hundreds of important people from all over the world, and two women with the exact same name, Ethel Lynn Lundburg, wearing the exact same outfit, who had never met before. What were the odds?

About one in six point four billion.

General Lank paced back and forth in one of the tents as Ezra slept on his pop-can throne and Dennis sat on a cot thinking. The steady stream of beings was still continuing, and all over the world the attacks by the buglike sarus and tornadolike telts were increasing. On the small TV in the corner of the tent, the news was reporting a herd of avalands that had been tearing up farms in Canada and a building that had walked into a nearby lake. In addition to the Eiffel Tower getting up and walking off, so had one of the pyramids and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. And as of an hour ago, large parts of the Great Wall of China were wriggling toward Mongolia.

General Lank stopped and looked down at a chart he had rolled out over a metal table. Other officials, including a jittery and sweaty Elton Thumps, were looking over the chart and talking on phones and radios. By now most of the world knew that telts could be destroyed with water, sarus hated fire, and avalands could be stopped by stone barricades. But even with that new knowledge, stopping these things was not easy. And now the U.S. military held in captivity things like black skeletons and rants and cogs and all manner of odd beings. To make matters worse, the Dearth had escaped and those in captivity were growing restless. Plus, the entire world was looking for answers, and so far the things that had crawled out of Blue Hole had only offered up more questions.

“We have doctors and scientists looking over the creatures,” General Lank said into his phone. “No, so far there has been no real aggression. But I can’t promise calm forever. There has been some protest over our examining them.”

Dennis stood up.



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