Cold Cereal

by Adam Rex

  “You!” he barked as he dismounted. “Stay there! Keep those hands where I can see them!”

  The normal-sized man with the tiny wrinkled head raised his arms. “These hands?” he asked.

  The rider was all in black, with some kind of thick and undoubtedly bulletproof vest and an oily black gun slung over his shoulder. He reached back to touch this gun as if drawing some shallow sense of strength and security from it, which of course he was. He also had a small stone around his neck on a tether, a coldstone, and this was busily giving off purple sparks. But in the glare of his headlamp, the rider hadn’t noticed.

  This old man was strangely built, like he hadn’t enough head but had entirely too much neck. “The park isn’t safe tonight,” the rider told him. “You should return to your home.”

  “Mind turnin’ that off, lad?” the old man asked.

  “Sorry,” said the rider, and he reached up to switch off the pink light of the helmet.

  “Yeh have somethin’ in your eye,” the old man added.

  “I … huh?”

  The rider pulled the goggles up and over his helmet. And then he winced when he saw that, while the old man was still standing before him, his head had just now disappeared.

  “Oh,” said the rider, and then Mick leaped off Scott’s shoulders and punched the man with his hard little walnut fists. The rider stumbled backward and sprawled over the fenders of his ATV.

  The whole thing came off like a gag in a cartoon, albeit a cartoon with punching. Lots of punching.

  “See,” said Mick to the rider, who was now unconscious and prostrate on the ground, “I says, ‘Yeh have somethin’ in your eye.’ An’ then you says, ‘What have I got in my eye?’An’ then I says, ‘My fist.’ Yeh did it wrong.”

  “That was … kind of violent,” said Scott as he fixed his shirt and jacket.

  “You shoulda seen me in the ol’ days,” Mick heaved as he sat down on the rider’s back. “Coulda tied his gun in a bow. Coulda dropped an anvil on him. Think yeh can drive his motor-bike? I can’t reach the handlebars.”

  Erno shook Biggs awake, then Emily. She gave a tiny mewl and got to her feet.

  “What’s going on?” she whispered with her palms over her eyes. Above them the small windows flickered with light. All around, distant shouts.

  Biggs strode forward in his XXXL monogrammed pajamas (B.B.) and scooped Emily up to his shoulders. “Smoke,” he said.

  It took Erno a few seconds before he could smell it too, and by then anyone could see it seeping in through cracks, around the edges of windows, or collecting like evil thoughts around the hundred holes left by Emily’s wild magic.

  “Have to get out,” Biggs added.

  Erno darted from the living room to the kitchen and back. “I can’t see Harvey,” he announced, then coughed. “He’s invisible again.”

  Biggs scanned the tree house through the thickening haze. Emily was coughing now, too.

  “MY CAR KEYS.” The big man held Emily close and bellowed as he turned. “RABBIT-MAN, WHERE ARE MY CAR KEYS?”

  Scott and Mick jolted forward on the ATV. They lurched and rattled. The hand controls were really sensitive.

  “Yeh drive like a spastic,” said Mick from the backpack.

  “Maybe you should drive then,” Scott answered, his voice muffled by the big black helmet. “Oh right, you can’t because you’re the size of a football.”

  They were silent for a moment as they hurtled toward some distant glow.

  “’M bigger’n a football,” Mick muttered.

  They bucked over roots and stones, and all the while that strange light in the distance shimmered and grew.

  “Oh no,” Scott whispered. He had just begun to feel the heat of it. And then the trees parted, and Biggs’s oak was burning from the top down like a colossal torch. The tree house was engulfed and snapping angrily. The ashes of Biggs’s life rose in the blistering air.

  There were a lot of people here, dressed in black with black guns, casting black shadows.

  “We’re too late,” Mick said. “Turn back. If they’re alive we can’t help ’em. Stop. Scott?”

  Scott finally brought the ATV to a stop and turned it haltingly in the opposite direction. “I don’t know where to go.”

  “Just away,” said Mick. “We’ll think o’ somethin’.”

  They had been fleeing for perhaps a minute when Scott felt something strike his helmet. For one thrilling moment he thought he was being shot at.

  “Woah,” said Mick. “Stop a second. Someone’s throwin’ rocks.”

  Scott slowed. “Someone’s throwing rocks, and you want to stop?”

  “Behind us. Look! It’s Harvey.”

  Scott stopped and looked. It was Harvey, or someone who looked like Harvey. So it was pretty safe to assume it was Harvey.

  “They’re coming!” Harvey shouted. “Thayve me!”

  “Where are the rest?” asked Mick as he leaped down from the backpack and the rabbit-man neared. “The big man an’ the kids?”

  “I don’t know,” said Harvey, his ears twitching about. His trousers were sooty and his tie torn. “It wath all very confuthing. Caoth. There wathn’t anything I could do to help. They’re probably fine. We should go.”

  Then, in one thrilling moment, they were being shot at. There was someone, a fair distance away but closing fast on another ATV, pistol blazing. As they stumbled over one another to mount up, Scott could just barely make out a voice over the drone of the engine, a familiar voice shouting between gunshots.

  “Hey, Scotty!” Bang. “Hold up, I want to ask you something!” Bang bang. The last shot cracked a stone just three feet away as Scott urged the ATV into motion again.

  “That’s Haskoll, isn’t it?” asked Mick from the backpack.

  “Who’th Hathkoll?” asked Harvey from the seat just behind Scott. If Scott could have comfortably answered, he would have first asked the pooka to hold on to something other than his neck.

  Scott weaved in and out of the underbrush, slalomed through trees. Occasionally the report of Haskoll’s pistol and the destruction of some nearby piece of tree trunk informed them that he hadn’t run out of bullets yet.

  An earpiece inside the helmet Scott was wearing crackled to life. “Heeyy, buddy. Just wanted to keep you apprised of the situation: up to now I’ve been missing on purpose, because Goodco wanted your friends alive. But I just got a kill order. To kill you. Doesn’t that sound all double-oh-seven? ‘Kill order.’ What a world.”

  Scott turned a hard left and almost flipped the ATV.

  “Jeez,” said Harvey. “Kid driveth like a thpathtic.”

  “He knows.”

  “See,” said Haskoll inside Scott’s helmet, “seems the bigwig just decided your pals are more trouble than they’re worth. And Goodco has never really had a problem with killing children. But if you’ve ever read the side of one of their cereal boxes you know that already, amiright, Scotty?”

  Two shots rang out, and Scott thought he could feel them pass closer. Or maybe he was just imagining it.

  “Oh,” said Haskoll, “and FYI: I’m not going to run out of bullets. This is a magic gun. Seriously. Bigwig has a history of handing out magic weapons. Crazy, right? I call it ‘Glamdring.’ Blam!”

  Haskoll had actually said ‘blam,’ but he’d fired at the same time, and Scott felt a thud shudder up through the seat of his pants. Then there was another bang from the ATV itself, which presently shimmied and stalled, and struck a log Scott had been struggling to avoid. All three passengers were bucked over the handlebars and into a bed of ferns.

  Their ATV was on fire, and blooming with thick, dark smoke. They disentangled themselves in a panic as they listened to the approaching buzz of Haskoll’s vehicle. So there was no surprise when they turned to find him just stopping, some thirty feet off, and aiming Glamdring in their direction. He was wearing jeans with flip-flops and a T-shirt with a picture of a unicorn wearing a hoodie.

  This is the ma
n who’s going to kill me, Scott thought. It was an odd thought, as though he’d been expecting an entirely different sort of man to kill him.

  “’Kay, just in case Scotty hasn’t filled you in,” said Haskoll, and he waggled his pistol. “Magic gun, kill order. Bigwig doesn’t care whether I bring you two in dead or alive, so you can make this all go more smoothly if you step away from Scotty and sit tight a minute.”

  Meaning he’s just going to kill me, thought Scott with a pukey sort of rage boiling up inside him. Later (and there would be a later) he would think about how he’d been furious not because he was going to die, but because there were people such as Haskoll in the world. That they could live and breathe and were permitted to walk around looking to the naked eye as if they were perfectly ordinary human beings. There should be fancy goggles with coal-black lenses that would show you what this man really looked like, Scott thought.

  Haskoll was going about the one-handed business of producing a cigarette and lighting it with a shiny metal lighter. Mick was still standing close to Scott, though Harvey had stepped some distance away. His long ears were rigidly straight, and Scott thought he could hear the pooka muttering, “… Won’t go back, won’t never go back …”

  They all shivered in the breeze.

  “That’s sweet,” said Haskoll around the edge of his cigarette. “The leprechaun is standing by you, Scotty.”

  “Clurichaun,” Mick mumbled automatically.

  “Friends are so important,” Haskoll continued. “More important than the air we breathe. But can I say, and I’m just being honest, that as far as human shields go, the Mayor of Munchkinland there is neither human nor a shield—”

  “GAAH! Jeez!” Scott snarled suddenly. Even Mick jumped. “Could you possibly just go ahead and kill me?! You’re not seriously so evil that you’re actually going to make me listen to you talk first, are you?”

  “Whoah! Hey, Scotty’s grown a pair—”

  “Shut up. Okay? My name is Scott. Or Scottish, or…” Scott took a breath. “Look, just because you’ve won doesn’t mean you’re clever, or funny. You’re just a horrible jerk with a gun. And an idiot. And you dress like an idiot. If you have a magic gun, you call it Ex-Calibre, okay? It’s obvious. You stole Glamdring from The Hobbit.”

  “‘Ex-Calibre,’” Haskoll repeated. “Huh.”

  “And seriously … friends are more important than air? Do you even listen to yourself? You talk like a birthday card. Some awful birthday card with flowers on the front.”

  Possibly the greatest insult of all was that Haskoll wasn’t even looking at him anymore. His attention had been stolen by Harvey, whom Scott was dimly aware had begun to flinch and quiver as he muttered. The rabbit-man was having a kind of fit, and his pink eyes flashed with something other than moonlight.

  “So … you know, in closing: you’re stupid,” Scott added. “Can’t we just get this over with?”

  “Yeah…,” Haskoll agreed, his eyes still on Harvey. “Yeah, maybe we should.” He pulled a walkie-talkie from the ATV to his mouth and said, “This is Haskoll. Converge on my GPS. I have two for transport back to HQ.” Then he leveled his weapon at Scott’s chest.

  “WON’T NEVER GO BACK!” Harvey screeched.

  “Why don’t you shut the—” Haskoll began, and that’s when he was crushed by something heavy from above.

  It was a metal … something … the size of a refrigerator. It might conceivably have been cylindrical a second before but was now looking kind of cubist. It had landed with a powerful crunch and a thump that rippled through the ground to where Scott and Mick stood. It was smoking. It had Haskoll and an ATV under it.

  An owl hooted, somewhere.

  “What … is that?” said Scott.

  Mick stepped forward. “I think it’s a piece o’ airplane.”

  Scott winced at the sky. “Hopefully not a really important piece of airplane.”

  “WON’T NEVER GO BACK!” Harvey said again. He was hoarse and panting. The light in his eyes had dimmed.

  “Do you … think they can still converge on his GPS?” asked Scott.

  “Hmm,” said Mick. “Either way, we better hoof it. Harvey?”

  “Yeth,” said the rabbit-man. He was looking suddenly tired.

  “Time to go.”

  CHAPTER 26

  The metal crate in which they were being carried was just big enough that Erno could turn to look out the narrow opening beside his head, then back again to check on Emily. She seemed unhappy but calm, oddly resigned. As if she’d always expected to end up in a cage eventually. As though she’d been backing into one her whole life.

  “I’m sorry, Erno,” she whispered suddenly.

  “Sorry … for what? What did you do?”

  “I knew this was going to happen. Something like this. I’ve known all along, but I wouldn’t let myself believe it. Did you know,” she continued, “that I did a little research about my ear infection a while back?”

  Erno shook his head.

  “All the books I checked said it should normally last about six months to a year. Six months to a year, and here I’ve had it since I was a baby.”

  Erno nodded, and wondered if she realized her pink ear medicine had been causing the trouble rather than treating it. “Did you ask Mr. Wilson about it?”

  “He said I had a special kind of infection. Very rare. He said I’d probably need to use these drops for a long time. I didn’t look into it after that,” Emily said. “I just trusted Dad. I was only five.”

  Five, thought Erno.

  “I just didn’t think about it. I … didn’t let myself,” she whispered. “I’ve been like this for a long time. It’s like, I suddenly remember that I’ve forgotten something. Something really important. But when I try to concentrate, to recall what the important thing is, it slips away. It slips away, and I forget that I ever remembered that I forgot it, for a while. But I’m facing it now. I’m facing it all, and it’s like I already know everything. Everything. I know it’s not true, of course, but that’s what it feels like.”

  “You don’t know everything,” Erno tried to comfort her. “You … don’t know what number I’m thinking of.”

  “Seven,” said Emily.

  Erno frowned.

  “It’s like my mind’s a black hole,” she continued. “All the knowledge of the world just rushes in.”

  “Wait,” said Erno. “I’m thinking of another one. Between one and one hundred.”

  “Forty-three.”

  “That’s … not it,” Erno attempted to say casually.

  “Don’t lie.”

  “Okay,” Erno admitted. “But how did you know?”

  “You wanted a number near the middle because it seemed safer,” Emily explained. “All those other numbers, like padding on either side. But not too near the middle. So something in the forties, because you subconsciously believe anything over fifty is aggressive, and you’re not an aggressive person.”

  Erno huffed.

  “You chose an odd number,” Emily continued, “because odd numbers seem more ‘random.’ You—”

  “Okay, new one!” Erno whispered hotly. “Sixteen!”

  Emily paused, delicately.

  “Erno, I’m supposed to guess, not—”

  “Okay! Yes. I know that. So—you guess.”

  “It’s still sixteen, isn’t it.”

  Erno sighed. “Yes.”

  “The only thing I don’t get is what happened in the tree house,” Emily said with a little frown. “When I blacked out.”

  “The magic?”

  She scoffed. “There’s no such thing.”

  The guards carrying their crate trudged along out of the park, their gaits swaying the crate in a constant tide that was getting Erno a little queasy. He could only imagine what it was doing to Emily. Somewhere, close by, still more soldiers were carrying the unconscious body of Biggs. It had taken ten men to subdue him.

  “There’s something else I know,” Emily continued,
more softly than before. “I know that … we were brought together and … raised together for the sake of an experiment. To test the Milk-7. I know… I know we’re not really brother and sister.”

  Erno turned away from the window. Emily was all folded up, tiny as she could be, her arms hugging her knees to her chest. He reached out and put his hand over hers.

  “Sure we are.” He smiled. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “This is Biggs’s car?” asked Scott. It didn’t seem possible.

  “I’ve theen him get out of it,” said Harvey as he unlocked the door. “It’th like a pop-up book.”

  “An’ you have the keys … why?” said Mick.

  “I was clothetht to them. We planned to meet at the car. Gueth they didn’t make it. So! I can drop you guyth thomewhere but then I’m driving thtraight through to Mexthico.”

  “Wait,” said Scott, “no.”

  “Harvey,” Mick began, “those kids need help. That big man who took yeh in needs help. Yeh said before that yeh could smell magic in Em’ly. I was thinkin’…”

  Harvey spun around and threw his hands up. “What? That I could track her? Rethcue everyone? After that thtunt I pulled in the park, I’m lucky I thtill have enough glamour to light a candle!”

  “Yeh owe these folks. They took yeh in. If you want that glamour back—”

  “I gotta live an honorable life? Thweet Danu, are you joking? This ith where magic cometh to die, Mick! Have you theriouthly not figured thith out yet? Glamour doethn’t return, here. I’m… I’m thorry yourth ith gone, but…”

  They fell silent, and Mick bowed his head. He thinks it’s gone, too, thought Scott. Mick thinks his magic’s gone for good.

  “There’s livin’ well for its own sake,” Mick murmured. “An’ doin’ what’s right. There’s still that.”

  Harvey lifted his ears, looked suddenly resolute. “You’ve forgotten what we are. We’re the angelth what didn’t fall all the way. We’re the mere anarchy loothed upon the world,” he told Mick. “You’ve forgotten what I am, anyway. In four thouthand yearth I haven’t never done no one a good deed he didn’t regret.”