“Benji? Hello?”
“Sorry. Did you say something?”
“Yes, I said we have to hurry. We’re going to miss the parade, but I don’t want to miss the game, too.”
“Hurry to do what?”
“X-ray the pod! I went and got it after school. It’s in the med truck.”
“Wait, you brought it here?”
“Yes, Benji, I did. We promised each other we’d do this important thing together. That’s serious, whether you take it seriously or not,” Zeeko said with uncharacteristic sternness. Then he looked closer at Benji and softened. “Whoa, hey, are you okay? Skipping out isn’t like you, dude.”
“No, I’m not,” Benji said, too emotionally exhausted to lie. “Everything is falling apart. Nothing is how it’s supposed to be.”
“How is it supposed to be?”
“I don’t know. I’m just— All of this is going to be over soon, you know? And best-case scenario, it will have been the most and only amazing thing that ever happened to me. I’ll be stuck in this town forever, and my life is going to suck—”
“Oh, hush yourself, please.” Zeeko laughed.
“What?”
“Listen to me. You, my dear buddy, have a tendency to be a touch overdramatic and a wee bit panicky if you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. Things are effed up now, that’s a fact, fair enough. Maybe you’re not going to get everything you want. Maybe you can still get that apprenticeship at the Magic Lantern, or maybe that won’t happen, either. But sometimes things turn out better than your plan. I think it’s because of God’s plan, but either way, I am absolutely sure you’ll get through this. Your life is not going to suck. And you need to trust me on that, because I am so much smarter than you that it ain’t even funny.”
Despite himself, Benji laughed. “Thanks, Zeeko.”
“Now let’s get to work, huh, buddy? Let’s find out what’s behind Door Number Pod.”
“I’m gonna change out of my tux first, cool?”
“Sure. I’ll get the machine warmed up.”
“You want to X-ray it here?”
Zeeko gestured at the empty street. “There is literally nobody else around.”
“It’s Papaw’s day off, though,” Benji said, his gaze flicking to the house.
“He’s not home. When I was looking for you, I knocked for about twenty minutes straight.”
As Zeeko headed to the X-ray mobile, Benji felt a thread of disquiet stitch through him.
He went to his house, unlocked the front door, and opened it.
And everything changed.
He understood something was wrong the moment he crossed the threshold: When he took his first step into the house, it splashed.
Benji looked down, and lifted his foot. The ancient hardwood floor was splotched with a thin layer of red liquid. His gaze followed the erratic trail of water up the length of the dark hall. The liquid was leaking from beneath the door of Papaw’s den.
No.
And then he was running down the hall, throwing open the door to the den. Papaw’s orderly world had been thrown into chaos, his recliner flipped, his lamp shattered.
But Benji didn’t see anyone.
“Papaw?”
Someone whispered, “See . . .”
Benji whirled, heels shrieking in the water. Papaw’s jukebox lay facedown on the floor in a ring of broken glass. The piping that normally conveyed the bubbling water upward had been shattered. Its neon lights flickered and zapped, painting the room sporadically red.
“See, honey, I’m the Voyager—see, tramping the journey is my story, sir,” the jukebox sang at the volume of a whisper. “I prefer the horizon to a past. . . .”
And in the time it took for that lyric to finish, Benji looked around the room again. There was no reason to feel relieved. The wallpaper was shredded from the walls, there was a revolver lying in the corner of the room, and oh God oh God, what had happened to Papaw?
Something stirred outside the den.
Benji stepped into the hall and heard the sound again, like the breath of someone in pain, from the kitchen.
“Papaw?”
No reply.
Some part of Benji understood that it could be dangerous to go into the kitchen, that he might well find McKedrick waiting there, but Benji could not not go. What if Papaw was in there, hurt or something worse?
Like the den, the kitchen was empty except for the wreckage. Chairs were reduced to shards of wood, the faces of cabinets torn off the hinges. Benji tried to turn on the lights; even the bulbs had been smashed. The windows had been, too, and when a breeze slipped in through one of the missing panes, he heard the sigh again, but understood it wasn’t a sigh. It was only something softly fluttering behind him on the kitchen table.
“Mary and Joseph above,” he whispered.
The note lay on the table, held down by a block of kitchen knives. In the chaos of the kitchen, the neat square of Bedford Falls Sheriff’s Desk Stationery looked surreal, like a smile in a nightmare of murder.
Benji picked up the note. The message on it was a violent scrawl, the paper ripped where the wild pen scratched through. In the long history of notes from his grandfather, Benji had never received one as short as this. Just three letters. Just a single syllable. But the message screamed off the page like a siren so deafening that his sense of reality splintered, finally and irretrievably, like a looking glass tumbling from the imagined stars and shattering against the uncaring earth.
RUN
16
Run.
But paralysis seemed to have fused him to the spot.
Run.
But what had happened here? Where was Papaw?
Run; but what if he’s dead?
The cold breeze haunted the kitchen again.
Benji turned slowly. Through the ruined window, he could see Papaw’s cruiser. The door of the garage was open. The covered car Papaw had been working on this morning was gone. Then . . . maybe he got away, Benji thought, his brain seeming roughly a million miles away from his skull.
Away from what?
Away from here.
!!RUN!!
And finally, Benji did.
His footfalls splashing, he stumbled, tried to catch himself as he hit the floor, and accidentally activated one of the card-shooters hidden in his trick-loaded tuxedo sleeves. A blizzard of Bicycle cards fluttered out before he picked himself up and dashed down the hallway.
He reached the porch and opened his mouth to scream for Zeeko to run. He stopped himself, his gaze snapping left, right, his nerve endings ignited with paranoid terror. Is McKedrick here? Benji didn’t see anyone, not even Zeeko; the rear silver door to the X-ray mobile was shut.
He heard a gunshot.
Except, no, not a gunshot: Perhaps a mile to the east, a yellow firework bloomed, a billion frantic dandelion sparks descending like a swarm. It was five thirty p.m. in Bedford Falls, and the homecoming parade had begun.
Benji walked toward the street, not quite daring to run, feeling vulnerable in the wide space. He reached the X-ray mobile, found the rear door locked, knocked on it. “Zeeko!” he said softly, but new fireworks boomed, drowning out his voice. “Zeeko!” he said louder, and pounded.
Zeeko’s grinning face appeared in the small porthole-shaped window in the door. “What’s the magic worrrrd?” he said.
“Open the door!”
“Incorrect.”
“Zeeko, OPEN IT!”
“One more time from the top, dahling.”
“Zeeko, OPEN THE FREAKING DOOR—PLEASE!”
Zeeko congratulated Benji and began a brief lecture on the virtues of patience as he finally cracked the door. Benji threw the door wide and launched himself into the vehicle and slammed the door behind him.
“What the eff’s wrong with you?” Zeeko said.
“Something happened to my Papaw,” Benji said, peering out the porthole window onto the street. His panting breath fogged it.
�
�What?”
“The house is wrecked up. Some kind of fight.” Benji tried to wipe the fog from the window but only succeeded in smearing it. He looked back at Zeeko. “The agent knows now, somehow he found out, and he came looking for me.”
Zeeko gaped at him, thunderstruck. “Why isn’t he here? If he knows, why isn’t he here waiting for you?”
“I don’t know! We have to do the X-ray now, Zeeko. If they took Papaw, that’s the only leverage we’ve got to get him back. Where’s the pod?” Not waiting for an answer, Benji moved past Zeeko. He’d mentally compared the interior of the X-ray mobile to an ambulance before, but that was wrong. The vehicle was more like an armored car, mixed with a mad scientist’s lab. It was divided into two sections: X-ray chamber and general med center in back, and driver’s section in front, separated by a silver wall.
Benji walked past something that looked like a phone booth. He glanced inside for the pod, but saw only a computer and monitor. It was the radiation-proof station for the X-ray operator.
“The agent?” Zeeko said, still stunned.
“Yes, the agen—ow!” He’d hit his head on some kind of machine that hung from above, situated on a circular track in the ceiling. It looked like a bone-white mechanical arm pointing toward the chamber floor. At the end of the arm was an orb, like a great blinkless eye. This was what generated the X-rays, Benji realized. He finally spotted his magic trunk sitting in shadows in a back corner.
“The agent!” Zeeko repeated. His tone, now not stunned but frightened, made Benji look back.
Zeeko was staring out the porthole window in the door . . . and suddenly, brilliant white light, far brighter than any firework, blazed through the porthole, dazzling all the surfaces in the chamber.
A black SUV had come around the corner at the end of the street. The vehicle was identical to those of the Newporte crew, but of course it wasn’t them. It was McKedrick, the man in black, and now, at long last, Benji really was going to be vanished.
The SUV barreled toward the X-ray mobile, its high beams ignited like the eyes of a fairy-tale monster.
Benji threw the lid of his magic trunk open. The pod glimmered inside. He reached under it, searching. “Where’s the gun?”
“What?”
“The ray gun, Zeeko!”
“Y-you have it, don’t you?”
No.
The SUV peeled to a stop fifteen feet away.
Agent McKedrick, black jacket whipping in the wind, stepped out into the night. He had the fire-eyed look of a man in focused pursuit of his prey.
“Kid!”
“Holy shit,” Zeeko breathed.
“Lightman, I’m going to need you to exit your vehicle right now,” McKedrick said with terrible calmness barely disguising fury. “I’m going to need you to do it with your hands up.”
Almost without Benji realizing, McKedrick was within one step of the X-ray mobile. The agent reached for the door.
Benji grabbed the inside door handle in the same moment McKedrick grabbed the one outside. McKedrick was strong, almost impossibly strong, and the door came open an inch, two, three. Benji hauled back, arching his back and throwing all his weight into the effort. He managed to shut it again. “Zeeko, lock it!” he cried, and Zeeko did.
Through the window, Benji’s and McKedrick’s eyes met, inches apart, separated only by the pane.
“No more games, kid!” McKedrick shouted. “I’ve been to the quarry! I know something happened there, and I’ve got a pretty damn strong intuition you and your friends had something to do with it!”
“Where’s my grandpa?”
McKedrick didn’t seem to hear, or maybe care. “There are men in my business who will do terrible things to you. You and everyone you love. They can be here within the hour. You are in over your head, kid. You are not playing with fire; you’re screwing with an atomic bomb. Now, come out. Be a man and come out and let me see what you’re hiding. You have no idea what can happen to you if you don’t.”
“Bullshit! You already hurt Papaw!”
McKedrick again refused to acknowledge what Benji had said. He only stared at Benji with that awful but eroding calm. He glanced around the streets, as if scanning to confirm they were truly alone. Then he looked back at Benji.
“Your call, kid.”
McKedrick stepped back, reached into his jacket, and pulled out a handgun fitted with a long silencer.
Screaming, Benji and Zeeko fell backward onto the floor. A bullet slammed into the outside of the door, punching a dimple into the heavy, radiation-proof metal, which had barely stopped the bullet.
The silenced pistol chirped again, and the door handle was blown out of the door. Malformed by the bullet, the twisted metal flew toward them.
Zeeko screamed and grabbed his bicep. Blood spurted between his fingers.
“Are you okay?!” Benji said.
“I’m SHOT! I am sort of SHOT!”
“You want to live, kid?” the agent said. He tried to open the door; a piece of the shattered handle was stuck in the jamb, and the door wouldn’t budge. “Get out!”
“Can—can you still work the X-ray, Zeeko?”
Zeeko went, “Whaaaat?”
A bullet flew through the porthole window. The glass crashed inward as the bullet embedded itself in the ceiling, missing the precious X-ray generator by inches. McKedrick’s arm reached through the window, searching for the inner doorknob.
Benji shoved Zeeko into the X-ray’s operating booth and ran frantically for the door that separated the driver’s seat from the X-ray chamber.
“What are you doing?” Zeeko cried from the booth.
Benji threw open the door. The keys were in the ignition. “Hold on to something, Zeeko!”
He turned the keys, gunning the vehicle to life. If they X-rayed the pod and put the picture online, they would have leverage. If they didn’t, McKedrick could vanish them without worry.
Papaw, Benji thought. He threw the X-ray mobile into drive and rocketed away.
Correction: tried to rocket away.
The vehicle lurched forward maybe two whole feet. Benji pushed the pedal all the way to the floor. The steering wheel rattled, the engine whinnied, and the vehicle began moving at the pace of an impressive riding lawnmower. Panicked, Benji looked in the side-view mirror. He saw a stunned McKedrick fall off the back of the X-ray mobile and begin to chase on foot.
Zeeko appeared behind Benji. “The parking brake!” he said. He looked like he was wearing a sleeve of blood. With his uninjured arm, he yanked the emergency brake lever beside the wheel.
The vehicle’s speed immediately doubled, sending Zeeko spilling and screaming into the X-ray chamber.
Benji heaved the wheel hard left like a mad sea captain; the vehicle tilted as it fishtailed, doing a one-eighty so that it was now aimed toward the exit of Benji’s dead-end street.
The X-ray mobile zoomed past McKedrick’s SUV just as the agent gave up the foot chase and ran back to his own car.
“Zeeko!”
“What!”
“Turn on the machine and X-ray the pod!”
“I’M SHO—”
“I know you’re shot—hold on!”
Their vehicle reached the end of the road. Benji had to make a choice of which way to go, and he did so at random, swerving right, once again making the vehicle tilt dangerously close to tipping.
“I KNOW YOU’RE SHOT,” Benji continued, “BUT IF YOU DON’T TAKE THAT PICTURE AND PUT IT ONLINE, WE WILL BE DEAD!”
“OKAY, OKAY, GOOD POINT, I’M DOING IT!”
Benji took another left, another right. The streets were empty except for the snow, a ghost town haunted only by the man in black. Benji could hear Zeeko struggling to get the trunk and pod positioned beneath the X-ray device. Benji took a narrow one-way street, hoping against hope he had somehow thrown McKedrick’s tail.
But no. After perhaps a minute of the chase, he saw the SUV turn a corner only a few seconds behind them.
; “Benji, the X-ray isn’t working!”
Benji’s stomach plummeted. “Did it get shot?”
“No, but the trunk is sliding all over the place! We have to stop the car somewhere!”
How? How was he supposed to do that? We stop, we’re dead.
“What do I do?” Benji said. He looked back, staring at the magic trunk that pinballed back and forth with every movement. “What am I supposed to do?” he said to the pod. “You have to help me, what am I supposed to do?”
The pod didn’t answer.
But the heavens did.
The night sky to the east boomed with a sudden great light. Blue sparks descended like a constellation caught and cascading on the same wind that likewise carried the brassy-sassy sounds of the Bedford Falls High School Marching Band.
Maybe half a mile away, Benji could see the fire department parking lot, where all the parade floats waited until it was their turn to join the parade.
A plan flashed in his mind.
We can stop the car if we do it in front of other people. That’s the only way it will be safe.
Benji made a hairpin turn, directing the X-ray vehicle toward the fireworks. So it turned out they weren’t going to miss the parade, after all.
17
The Bedford Falls Fire Department was an enormous, bright-red building, one of the last beneficiaries of the town’s brief economic boom. The road Benji sped down fed directly into the building’s parking lot, which was full of performers waiting to join the parade. Benji tapped his horn, driving very slowly through the lot, avoiding a convertible carrying last year’s Homecoming Queen, a gymnastics troupe of little kids, and a dozen old men who wore fezzes and drove tiny go-karts (they honked indignantly back at Benji, their horns going “ah-roooo-gah!”).
Zeeko appeared over his shoulder, wrapping his bleeding bicep with gauze. “God Almighty, buddy, tell me this is part of a plan.”
Benji tilted his hand one way and then the other: Kind of.
In front of him was a queue of cars waiting to turn onto Main Street. The crowd on the sidewalks wasn’t as big as it might have been, which made sense. This was the end of the parade, and the football team had already passed.
Mr. Fahrenheit Page 18