The Sea of Monsters

alarm bell thrummed.
    I knew any second we would be swamped by Luke’s reinforcements. Already, his warriors were getting over their surprise, coming at the centaurs with swords and spears drawn.
    Tyson slapped half a dozen of them aside, knocking them over the guardrail into Miami Bay. But more warriors were coming up the stairs.
    “Withdraw, brethren!” Chiron said.
    “You won’t get away with this, horse man!” Luke shouted. He raised his sword, but got smacked in the face with another boxing glove arrow, and sat down hard in a deck chair.
    A palomino centaur hoisted me onto his back. “Dude, get your big friend!”
    “Tyson!” I yelled. “Come on!”
    Tyson dropped the two warriors he was about to tie into a knot and jogged after us. He jumped on the centaur’s back.
    “Dude!” the centaur groaned, almost buckling under Tyson’s weight. “Do the words ‘low-carb diet’ mean anything to you?”
    Luke’s warriors were organizing themselves into a phalanx. But by the time they were ready to advance, the centaurs had galloped to the edge of the deck and fearlessly jumped the guardrail, as if it were a steeplechase and not ten stories above the ground. I was sure we were going to die. We plummeted toward the docks, but the centaurs hit the asphalt with hardly a jolt and galloped off, whooping and yelling taunts at the Princess Andromeda as we raced into the streets of downtown Miami.
    I have no idea what the Miamians thought as we galloped by.
    Streets and buildings began to blur as the centaurs picked up speed. It felt as if space were compacting—as if each centaur step took us miles and miles. In no time, we’d left the city behind. We raced through marshy fields of high grass and ponds and stunted trees.
    Finally, we found ourselves in a trailer park at the edge of a lake. The trailers were all horse trailers, tricked out with televisions and mini-refrigerators and mosquito netting. We were in a centaur camp.
    “Dude!” said a party pony as he unloaded his gear. “Did you see that bear guy? He was all like: ‘Whoa, I have an arrow in my mouth!’”
    The centaur with the googly-eye glasses laughed. “That was awesome! Head slam!”
    The two centaurs charged at each other full-force and knocked heads, then went staggering off in different directions with crazy grins on their faces.
    Chiron sighed. He set Annabeth and Grover down on a picnic blanket next to me. “I really wish my cousins wouldn’t slam their heads together. They don’t have the brain cells to spare.”
    “Chiron,” I said, still stunned by the fact that he was here. “You saved us.”
    He gave me a dry smile. “Well now, I couldn’t very well let you die, especially since you’ve cleared my name.”
    “But how did you know where we were?” Annabeth asked.
    “Advanced planning, my dear. I figured you would wash up near Miami if you made it out of the Sea of Monsters alive. Almost everything strange washes up near Miami.”
    “Gee, thanks,” Grover mumbled.
    “No, no,” Chiron said. “I didn’t mean . . . Oh, never mind. I am glad to see you, my young satyr. The point is, I was able to eavesdrop on Percy’s Iris-message and trace the signal. Iris and I have been friends for centuries. I asked her to alert me to any important communications in this area. It then took no effort to convince my cousins to ride to your aid. As you see, centaurs can travel quite fast when we wish to. Distance for us is not the same as distance for humans.”
    I looked over at the campfire, where three party ponies were teaching Tyson to operate a paintball gun. I hoped they knew what they were getting into.
    “So what now?” I asked Chiron. “We just let Luke sail away? He’s got Kronos aboard that ship. Or parts of him, anyway.”
    Chiron knelt, carefully folding his front legs underneath him. He opened the medicine pouch on his belt and started to treat my wounds. “I’m afraid, Percy, that today has been something of a draw. We didn’t have the strength of numbers to take that ship. Luke was not organized enough to pursue us. Nobody won.”
    “But we got the Fleece!” Annabeth said. “Clarisse is on her way back to camp with it right now.”
    Chiron nodded, though he still looked uneasy. “You are all true heroes. And as soon as we get Percy fixed up, you must return to Half-Blood Hill. The centaurs shall carry you.”
    “You’re coming, too?” I asked.
    “Oh yes, Percy. I’ll be relieved to get home. My