by Rick Yancey
“What happened to him?” I shouted in Bennacio’s ear.
“Duck, Kropp.”
I just stared stupidly at him, not moving until his hand shot out and pushed my head down. The window beside me exploded inward, raining glass on my back and legs, and I sat back up without thinking, turned, and saw the end of the shotgun about a foot away.
I grabbed it with both hands and screamed out the broken window at the guy on the bike, “Let go!” like he would if only I told him to. He didn’t let go.
I yanked as hard as I could before he could fire a second time and he had to choose between losing control and letting go of the shotgun. He let go and faded toward the emergency lane.
“Lean back, Kropp,” Bennacio said. His voice was loud but calm, as if we were still discussing corn dogs. He picked up the gun from my lap and pointed it at the biker out my window. I yelped and threw myself back against the seat as the gun exploded practically beside my nose.
The shell went through the window and landed in the gas tank of the Suzuki Hayabusa. I felt the heat of the fireball against my face, and the concussion from the blast shook the Ferrari so hard, Bennacio had to drop the shotgun onto my lap and grab the steering wheel with both hands to keep us from spinning out of control.
“I think I’m going to be sick!” I shouted against the howling wind.
He didn’t say anything. He was smiling, and I don’t think it was because I told him I was going to be sick.
23
Bennacio slowed to a more comfortable eighty, but the wind was still blowing fiercely in my face, so I scrunched down in the seat. I covered my eyes and wondered when the reinforcements would arrive.
I don’t know how long I sat there like that, shivering in the cold blasts of air, my knees actually knocking together and my teeth chattering in my head, but it seemed like a very long time. Then I heard the motor winding down and the wind dwindling. I took my hand away and saw Bennacio was pulling into the emergency lane. A tractor-trailer was coming up fast behind us, laying on its horn, and Bennacio gave the trucker a friendly little wave as he rumbled past.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“We’re out of gasoline,” he answered as the car slowly rolled to a stop.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I am not. Come, Kropp, we must walk now.”
“Walk?”
“We have no choice.”
“You keep saying that. How come we never have a choice?”
“Sometimes it is easier not to have one.”
We got out of the car and stood for a moment looking at it. It didn’t look cool anymore. I reached through the window and grabbed the shotgun.
“No, leave it, Kropp.”
I sighed and dropped it back onto the seat.
“Lemme ask you something, Bennacio. What’s with the swords and daggers and bows and arrows and medieval stuff like that? Aren’t you knights allowed to carry guns?”
“There’s nothing that prohibits us.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“It is mostly a matter of pride. You may think otherwise, but guns are far more barbaric than swords. There is no elegance to a firearm, Alfred.”
He smiled. “Besides, our way is more fun.”
We started to walk. We hadn’t gone very far, maybe a quarter of a mile, when I stopped walking. Bennacio, his head bowed, deep in thought, kept walking for several yards before noticing I wasn’t beside him. He stopped and watched as I sat down and wrapped my arms around my knees.
It had turned into a nice day, with just a few wisps of cloud and a light breeze from the south. I lifted my face to the sun. Bennacio came back to me and sat down.
“I’ll be honest with you, Bennacio. I’m pretty shaken up right now. I know this sort of thing must be normal for a knight, but what happened back there freaked me out a little. No. Not a little. A lot. You go to the movies and you watch these guys in car chases and shoot-outs and you think, hey, I could do that. I mean, you sit there in the dark theater and you kind of wish it was you up there taking out the bad guys. But it isn’t like that in real life, though this whole thing is starting to feel more like a movie than real life—which is weird, because I’m starting to miss my real life, even though it sucked. I’m not sure how much farther I can go.”
“I see.” He sighed. There was a sad look in his eyes. “Unfortunately, we cannot stay here long, Alfred. The police will be here soon—and perhaps worse.”
“More AODs?”
“AODs?”
“Agents of darkness.”
He smiled. “Yes. AODs. Quite so.”
“I don’t want to hold you up, Bennacio. You’ve got an important job to do—saving the world and everything, and it’s kind of selfish of me to tag along. Especially when I’m not even sure I want to be tagging along.”
“You do not give yourself enough credit, Alfred. Without you, I would not have survived this morning.”
He obviously said it to make me feel better, but I didn’t think he didn’t believe it.
“Broadway,” he said suddenly.
“Huh?”
He was smiling. “You asked what kind of music I like. I love show tunes.”
I don’t know why, but I laughed out loud.
“I am particularly fond of Lerner and Loewe. Camelot. Have you heard of it?” He sang softly. “ ‘In short there’s simply not/A more congenial spot/For happy-ever-aftering than here in/Camelot!’ Predictable, I know.”
I cracked up. It helped. “We gotta get a ride somehow, Bennacio,” I said after I caught my breath. “We can’t walk the whole way to Halifax.”
Bennacio stood up. “No, we cannot. Get up, Kropp, and stand with your hands by your sides.”
He was staring down the road, and I stood up and looked with him. I heard the siren before I saw the car and the flashing lights.
“Great,” I said. “Cops.”
The patrol car pulled into the emergency lane, cut the siren, but left the blue-and-reds spinning. The patrolman stepped out of the car, his hand on the butt of his pistol.
“Get on your knees with your hands behind your head!” he shouted at us. “Now!”
“Do as he says,” Bennacio said quietly, and we kneeled on the pavement and I laced my fingers behind my head. The patrolman’s shoes went scrape-scrape against the concrete as he came toward us.
“You fellows know anything about what happened back there?” he asked.
“We ran out of gas,” Bennacio said.
“Looks like you did more than that,” the cop said. He stopped a couple of feet from Bennacio, his gun drawn now and aimed at Bennacio’s high forehead.
“I have a gun,” Bennacio said calmly, as if he were remarking on the weather. “Behind my back.”
“Don’t move!” the cop said, and he wet his lips. He wasn’t much older than me, maybe nineteen or twenty, looking kind of silly in his tall brown hat, like a kid playing dress-up. He crouched down, the gun’s muzzle about four inches from Bennacio’s nose, and reached around his back to find the weapon that wasn’t there.
Bennacio’s right hand shot straight up, his index and middle finger extended from his fist, into the kid’s neck. He fell straight down and lay still.
“You killed him,” I said. “Jeez, Bennacio!”
“He is not dead,” Bennacio said. “Come, Alfred.”
He was already on his feet and walking rapidly toward the patrol car.
“We’re taking his car?”
“Yes.”
“Because we’ve got no choice.”
“Yes.”
“I want to go home, Bennacio.”
He turned at the door. “What home, Alfred?”
He wasn’t trying to be mean. He just didn’t know what I meant by “home.” What did I mean by “home”? The Tuttles’? Knoxville? He didn’t know and I sure didn’t know. I had no real home anymore.
I got in the car.
24
He cut the spi
nning red and blue lights, hit the gas pedal, and the Crown Victoria was soon up to 105. Cars pulled out of our way as we approached because we were obviously on some pretty important police business. I rode shotgun, next to the cop’s actual shotgun, and thought if we were attacked again it was all up to me because we were out of arrows and something like a shotgun wasn’t elegant enough for Bennacio.
We were in the Wyoming Valley, and to my right I could see the Poconos rising. I had never been on a road trip before, if you didn’t count the trips to Florida with my mom, which you couldn’t count, since that was a family thing. But you really couldn’t count this as a road trip either, since the one thing all road trips have in common is they’re supposed to be fun.
Bennacio turned on the scanner and listened to the chatter, but there wasn’t anything about a stolen cruiser—not yet, anyway, though we both knew it wouldn’t be long.
“What now?” I asked.
“We must find another means of transportation.”
“Lemme guess,” I said. “White stallions?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of a very fast cat,” he said. He turned on the flashing red-and-blues. The car directly in front of us changed into the right lane and Bennacio followed it, coming up close on his bumper.
“A Jaguar,” I said. “Fast cat, I get it, very funny, but how is carjacking part of the code of chivalry?”
He didn’t answer, but reached for the button that operated the siren.
“Hey, can I?” I asked.
“If you wish.”
I hit the button, the siren wailed, and Bennacio proceeded to flash his headlights at the Jaguar. It eased into the emergency lane. Bennacio stopped about ten yards behind it. Then he unhooked the shotgun from its holder and pressed it into my hand.
“I thought these were barbaric.”
“Just so, but you are not a knight.”
“I’m not shooting anyone, Bennacio.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary.”
He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a long, thin leather-bound folder. A checkbook. On the face of the top check, embossed in gold letters, were the words “Samson Industries.” He flipped it open and signed a blank check.
“To answer your question: No, we do not steal; we do not ‘jack cars,’ but sometimes there are those who refuse to sell. Come, Kropp.”
He was outside the car and walking up to the Jag before I could say anything. I heaved myself out of the cop car and followed him, holding the gun across my body. A big guy in a tan overcoat was stuffed behind the wheel of the little sports car. It was pretty clear from his expression that Bennacio and I weren’t what he was expecting after being pulled over by the Highway Patrol.
“What’s up?” he said.
“Don’t be alarmed,” Bennacio said. He motioned to me and, as soon as I stepped forward, Bennacio ripped the shotgun out of my hand and pointed at the big guy’s nose.
“Sure looks like I should be!” the big guy cried out, instinctively bringing his hands up.
“Step out of the car, please,” Bennacio said.
“Sure. You bet. Don’t shoot me.”
He had some trouble getting his bulk out of the car, but being nervous probably wasn’t helping his coordination.
“This is for your trouble,” Bennacio said, shoving the check at him. “I place it upon your honor to fill in an amount you feel is reasonable. Come, Kropp,” he said, and he tossed the shotgun at me. I caught it and halfheartedly pointed it at the incredulous guy, who didn’t know what to look at by that point: Bennacio getting behind the wheel of his Jag, me holding the shotgun, or the blank check in his trembling hand. I walked around him to the passenger side and said, to be helpful, “We left the keys in the ignition”—motioning toward the cop car—“but it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to follow us.”
I climbed into the car and Bennacio floored the gas before I could even get my seat belt fastened.
“You’re awful trusting, Bennacio,” I said after a few miles had rolled by and it was clear the guy wasn’t going to follow us in the borrowed cop car. “How do you know he won’t write himself a check for a million dollars?”
“Most people are honest, Kropp. Most are good and will choose right when given a choice. If we did not believe this, what point would there be in being a knight?”
Then he reached across the seat, grabbed the shotgun out of my lap, and tossed it out the open window.
25
Through the rest of Pennsylvania, up into New York, Massachusetts, onto 95 up the New England coast, into New Hampshire and then crossing the border into Maine, we stopped only for gas (the Jag gulped it) and to pee, and once to pick up a lobster sandwich at the McDonald’s drive-thru. I had no idea McDonald’s served lobster sandwiches. I kept looking behind us expecting to see a dozen cop cars bearing down on us—or more AODs, maybe on Harleys this time, sacrificing speed for muscle.
Twenty miles from the Canadian border, hitting 115 along State Road 9, I noticed we had the northbound lane practically to ourselves, but the southbound lane was backed up for miles.
“Something’s wrong,” I said. “Everybody’s fleeing Canada.” It was hard to imagine, though, Armageddon starting in Canada.
“Most likely the border has been closed.”
“What’ll we do?”
“We have no choice. We must cross.”
I pictured us flying through the barricades at 110 with the Royal Mounted Police racing after us. Right as I was picturing this, the first set of blue-and-reds shot out of the dark behind us. Soon there were three or four sets of them and I could hear the sirens from inside the car. Bennacio responded by speeding up, the needle hovering around 120. We roared past an electronic sign that was flashing: “Border Closed.”
“Look, this is bad, Bennacio,” I told him. “We gotta ditch the Jag and find a place to cross on foot.” It wasn’t the brightest suggestion, given we were being chased by half the patrol cars in Maine.
Bennacio didn’t answer. He kept our speed up until he saw the battalion of National Guardsmen with their assault rifles manning the crossing. The first line of soldiers had already gone to its knees and had taken aim at us.
He slammed on the brakes and we skidded about fifty feet to a stop. Then he said, “Get out of the car, Alfred. Make sure they can see your hands.”
I stepped out of the patrol car, my hands in the air, as somebody screamed into a bullhorn, “STEP OUT OF THE CAR—NOW! KEEP YOUR HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!”
Behind us the cop cars rolled in, lights blazing, and a dozen brown uniforms took positions behind their open doors. I wondered how Bennacio was going to get out of this one.
“ON YOUR STOMACH WITH YOUR HANDS OVER YOUR HEAD, FINGERS LACED!”
Bennacio nodded to me and we lay on the ground, side by side. These last few feet of America were very cold. Somebody came and stood right over us, and I could see my reflection in the bright finish of his black shoe.
“Hi. This is the point where I ask what your business in Canada is tonight,” the wearer of the shiny shoe said.
“There is a card in my jacket pocket,” Bennacio said. “Before you do anything rash, I suggest you contact the person on that card.”
I couldn’t see if Mr. Shiny Shoes got the card or not, but he walked away and was gone for some time.
“What’s going on, Bennacio?” I whispered.
“I am calling in a favor.”
“I’m cold,” I said. Bennacio didn’t say anything.
Somebody grabbed me by the collar and hauled me up. A guy in a blue Windbreaker, the owner of the polished shoes, handed Bennacio the card and said, “This is your lucky day.”
“It isn’t luck,” Bennacio answered. “It is necessity.”
We climbed back into the Jag. The guy in the blue Windbreaker and the very nicely shined shoes waved to the border guard. He hit the code to open the gate. The guy in the Windbreaker stepped back and waved us through.
<
br /> “Good luck!” he called, as we roared through the gate into Canada.
“Necessity,” Bennacio muttered.
26
I had never been to Canada, but I didn’t see much of it because it was dark and Bennacio took secondary two-lane roads. He drove through the night like the hounds of hell were after us. I knew Halifax was on the coast and probably he had a plane waiting there for him, but what good would it do if all flights were grounded? I tried to sleep, but you try sleeping in a Jaguar going 120 miles an hour in a strange country.
We crossed a long bridge at three a.m. and Bennacio told me we were in Nova Scotia. We may as well have been on the dark side of the moon for all I could tell. We drove in silence until a faint orange glow appeared on the horizon. At first I thought it was the sun rising, then remembered it was three a.m.
“We may be too late,” Bennacio said.
He slowed down to a leisurely eighty and, coming up on a huge fire, I saw we were at a private airstrip. There was some kind of wreckage burning on the runway.
Bennacio pulled into an access road that led directly to the airstrip. Three guys were standing at the end of it, next to a tan Chevy Suburban, wearing long brown robes like the one Bennacio wore the first time we met.
“I thought you were the last knight,” I said.
“I am,” he said. “And I believe I have told you, Alfred, that the Sword has many friends.”
He stopped the car and we got out. A light, freezing rain was falling. I could hear the ocean and taste the salt on my tongue. Bennacio left the headlights on and we gathered in front of the car. The air seemed to sparkle as the light danced in the tiny droplets of rain.
One of the guys came toward Bennacio. They kissed each other on both cheeks, and then the guy gave him a big hug and looked at me.
“Cabiri, this is Kropp,” Bennacio said.
“He is a Friend?” Cabiri asked, studying me.
“A Friend and a Wielder.”
“Indeed! Then he is my friend,” Cabiri said, and he kissed both my cheeks and wrapped me in the same tight bear hug.