Kings of Ruin

by Sam Cameron

Roger was some guy she’d been dating once in a while, whenever business brought him to town. Danny had met him at dinner once. Some fancy restaurant that required jackets for the men, and where the waiters expected you to know what foie gras was. Like Danny cared anything about snobbery like that. Roger was okay enough for Mom to date, though he had a narrow face and little eyes that reminded Danny of a rat.

  “Danny?” Mom asked. “Did you hear me?”

  He poked at his spaghetti. “Roger lives in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Nashville is not the middle of nowhere. You’re going to like it there.”

  Which was when he’d seen the bird again—that big black bird swooping down out of the sky to grab at him and rip him open with its talons. The bird was back except now it was plastic and cold and dragging him down into a watery grave—

  Suddenly, he coughed. Water tore out of his chest and up his throat, flooding through his mouth and out to the concrete pool deck below his cheek. The black man was bent over him, breathing hard.

  “You scared the crap out of me, kid,” he said.

  More water choked out of Danny in a vicious spasm. The cold, slimy liquid burned his nose, and he retched helplessly.

  “Come on,” the man said, just as the world turned dark. The last thing Danny heard was: “You’re coming with me.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kevin was sitting in the Pit, calibrating the sensors his father and Gear were setting out in different parts of the city. They had gone to the city’s public works department, flashed their official badges, and borrowed a city truck to get the job done. The zoron sensors would be mounted on stop signs, traffic lights, and telephone poles. Tiny but very powerful, they would spread a surveillance net that would locate and track Ruin #5.

  “Sensor twelve mounted,” Ford said.

  “Got it,” Kevin replied over his headset.

  “Where’s Gear?”

  “Went offline a few minutes ago,” Kevin said.

  “Anything else happening?”

  Kevin thought about the sandwich shop. He hadn’t learned anything new by checking up on Danny Kelly, but it had been kind of nice seeing him again. In a totally not-romantic, not-attracted-to-him kind of way, because Kevin didn’t do attachments.

  Still, if he were going to have a fantasy boyfriend, that boyfriend would totally look like Danny Kelly.

  “Nothing else is going on,” he told his dad.

  Ten minutes later, Gear showed up with a totally drenched Danny by his side. Danny was coughing and shivering and looked like a drowned rat. Gear didn’t look much better.

  “What the—” Kevin asked, startled. “You can’t bring him here!”

  “Kid nearly drowned,” Gear said. “Get a blanket.”

  Gear lowered Danny to the sofa. Kevin grabbed several blankets and towels from a cabinet and dropped them over him. Danny caught his gaze and started to say something like, “You—” but then hacked up more water and couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Make some coffee,” Gear said.

  Kevin put water on to boil. He closed the computer console doors, hoping to hide their equipment, but it was obvious Danny had already seen them. He only hoped Danny wouldn’t mention the sandwich shop. He didn’t think Ford or Gear would approve of that little field trip.

  “Who are you people?” Danny asked. “Spies?”

  Gear was already calling Ford, asking him to return. Kevin said, “No, not spies,” but didn’t know how much he really could tell him.

  Danny pulled the blankets tighter and tilted his head. “You were the one last night, right? You zapped my stepdad’s truck.”

  “Me?” Kevin asked.

  “You’re built like he was. Tall. And you have the same phone.”

  Kevin busied himself making coffee and hot chocolate and didn’t answer. Danny huddled into the blankets and looked around, taking everything in. Not that there was much to see—battered furniture, an old TV, some magazines. Ford arrived a few minutes later and looked very unhappy to see they had a guest.

  Ford said to Gear, “Tell me everything.”

  “The kid’s got a radio-controlled buggy that scored a ninety-two,” Gear said. “I couldn’t get a signature reading before it bolted. I chased them both, and this one fell into a pool. The buggy got away.”

  “What’s a ninety-two?” Danny asked.

  “A buggy?” Kevin asked. “Like a toy?”

  Danny sneezed. “What are we talking about here? Aliens? Ghosts? Robots from another dimension?”

  Kevin said, “Again with the science fiction movies.”

  Danny’s gaze met his in that moment, and Kevin felt it. A glint. A glimmer. Some kind of connection between them. It was warm and interesting, and Kevin wanted more of it.

  Ford interrupted their moment. “It doesn’t matter what exactly they are. The important thing is that we stop them.”

  Danny sneezed again. “Are they what’s making all the cars look funky?”

  Kevin was so surprised he almost dropped his hot chocolate. Gear and Ford exchanged looks and Ford asked, “Funky?”

  Danny wilted a little. “Never mind. It’s nothing.”

  But it wasn’t nothing, Kevin knew. It was hugely important. He leaned forward and asked, “What do you see when you look at cars?”

  “I don’t even know your names,” Danny said.

  “I’m Kevin,” Kevin said. “That’s Ford and that’s Gear. Nice to meet you.”

  Again, with that connection, that glint. Danny’s shoulders relaxed a little. “Yeah. I guess.”

  Ford leaned forward. “Listen to me. Did you hear about that car that got hit by a train last night? The kids who got killed?”

  Danny nodded. “They went to my school.”

  “These things we’re chasing, they kill people,” Ford said. “And they’ll kill more people. It’s very rare, but not unknown, that people who have been exposed to them develop the ability to see them. You were exposed last night to the one in your stepdad’s truck. The effect usually wears off in a few days, but if you can see them now, just by looking at a car, that’ll help us a lot.”

  Danny looked to Kevin for confirmation. Kevin nodded, strangely proud that Danny seemed to trust him.

  “I see colors,” Danny admitted. “Yellow and greens, some orange. Like it’s the car’s real color under the paint job. This RV? Bright white, though you obviously haven’t cleaned the outside in a few years.”

  “Bright white means a vehicle’s been zapped,” Gear said. “The more purple you see, the more infested a car is. If we drive him around town, he might be able to see the King just by looking at it.”

  “What’s a King?” Danny asked.

  Kevin didn’t like it. Number one, driving Danny around and hoping to see the King was like combing a haystack for a needle. Number two, Danny was a civilian. He didn’t have any training or background in dealing with Ruins.

  “Maybe we could handle it ourselves,” Kevin said to his father.

  But Ford was looking intently at Danny. “Don’t you want to help, Danny?”

  Danny sneezed again. “Yeah, sure. But I’m supposed to be at work right now. Zinc’s going to kill me for taking off like that. And my cell phone’s all waterlogged. My mom will freak if she can’t reach me.”

  “We’ll take care of all that,” Ford said. “Kevin, take him home to get some dry clothes. Then drive him around and see what you can find.”

  Kevin didn’t like it. “But he doesn’t even have a security clearance!”

  “I’ll take care of that,” Ford said.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ford made Danny sign a bunch of papers that said, basically, he was about to learn a bunch of national security secrets. If he told anyone, he could end up in prison for the rest of his life. It was pretty serious stuff, but Danny couldn’t stop sneezing, and he was distracted by the smell of slimy pool water that had soaked into his clothes. Afterward, Kevin drove him home in a Mazda that gave off a horribl
e screech when it first started.

  “Your fan belt’s slipping,” Danny said, muffled from the blankets he still had wrapped around him.

  “No kidding,” Kevin replied. “Are your parents going to be at home?”

  “No. They’re at the music festival. It’s their job.”

  Kevin fell silent. Danny wanted to ask him a dozen questions, beginning with all that high-tech equipment in the RV and how Kevin had gotten into this crazy line of work. But he felt a little awkward, too, because Kevin was ridiculously good-looking, and whenever Danny looked at him, he felt in danger of abandoning his heterosexual cover forever.

  “How old are you?” Danny asked.

  “Seventeen.”

  “And this is what you do? Drive around and try to catch these things?”

  “More or less.”

  Kevin didn’t sound happy to have Danny riding along. Which was too bad, because it hadn’t been Danny’s idea to nearly drown in a pool or get caught up in some kind of top secret government operation.

  On the other hand, it was kind of cool, too.

  When they reached Danny’s house, they found Rachel sitting at the kitchen island and painting her fingernails bright red. She asked, “What happened to you?”

  “Went swimming,” Danny said.

  “Who are you?” Rachel asked, sizing up Kevin.

  He didn’t flinch under the scrutiny. “I’m new in town.”

  “Since when?” Rachel asked.

  “Doesn’t matter.” Danny started trudging up the stairs. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

  He was nervous about what Kevin and Rachel could talk about while he was upstairs, but he was going to go crazy if he didn’t get the slimy smell off his skin. He took a short, hot shower and swallowed two aspirin against the pain in his wrist. When he emerged from the bathroom in only a towel, he was mortified to see Kevin sitting on his bed, reading one of his music magazines.

  “Hey!” he said. “A little privacy!”

  Kevin didn’t look up from the pages. “I’m not looking. Your stepsister wanted to ask me all sorts of questions so I had to escape.”

  “She’s okay.”

  “She thinks I’m your secret boyfriend.”

  Danny felt his face turn bright red. “She does not. She doesn’t know—I mean, no one knows. I’m not.”

  Kevin’s expression turned thoughtful. “You aren’t?”

  “Not officially,” Danny said.

  “Unofficially?”

  “Not at all,” Danny replied firmly. “She was just messing with you. I’m not, you know. Gay.”

  Kevin’s eyebrows went up. “You’re sure about that?”

  Danny grabbed clothes out of his closet and went back to the bathroom. His chest felt tight and his heartbeat too quick. Maybe he was having a panic attack. He’d never had one before, but now seemed like a good time to start. If Rachel thought he was gay then other kids did too, probably, Junior and all the rest, and all of Danny’s careful hard work was for nothing.

  He stared in the mirror. What did Rachel see when she looked at him? What did Kevin see? Danny messed up his hair, then combed it back, then deliberately didn’t put on any deodorant, then decided he didn’t want to smell bad all day.

  When he came out again, Kevin was looking at the framed pictures on his desk. Most were of friends and family back in San Francisco. One of the photos was of Danny, his dad, and his brother before their car accident.

  “They died in a wreck when I was little,” Danny said.

  Kevin’s voice was quiet. “My mom did, too.”

  Danny cleared his throat. “About the other thing—”

  “No problem,” Kevin said. “You’re not gay.”

  “Are you?” Danny blurted out.

  “Yeah.” Kevin didn’t sound worried or eager about it, just routine. He reached into his pocket. “Here, take this. Courtesy of the U.S. government until yours dries out.”

  It was a cell phone, nice enough but not the high-tech kind that Kevin carried. Danny turned it on and checked the signal. “So now what? We just drive around?”

  “Not so much,” Kevin said.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were parked downtown near the town library. The sun was shining down on the afternoon traffic and the library’s Halloween decorations. Kevin propped a silver box up against the steering wheel and started scanning cars as they passed.

  “Let’s test this ability of yours,” he said. “What color is that Lincoln Town Car?”

  Danny squinted. “Bluish-green.”

  “It’s scoring a twenty-two,” Kevin said. “These things we’re tracking radiate signatures and strengths. If a car has a twenty-two, it’s not a lot to worry about. Maybe the engine light goes on every once in a while for no good reason, or the headlights flicker now and then.”

  “Gear said 2KEWLE was a ninety-two.”

  “2KEWLE?”

  “The buggy.”

  Kevin hesitated. “Yes. That’s got to be wrong, though.”

  “Why?”

  “Because these things only affect combustible fuel engines. They look for things with gas and spark plugs. A remote-controlled toy doesn’t have either.”

  “If these things are in people’s cars, how come the government doesn’t send out a warning? Zap everybody’s cars and clean them out?”

  Kevin kept his eyes on the traffic. “In biology class, did they tell you about the million kinds of bacteria in your gut?”

  “The what?” Danny asked.

  “Your intestines. You’ve got all this bacteria in there, right? Everyone does. Like, two or three pounds of a million different kinds. And most of the time you don’t even notice. It’s like that with the Ruins.”

  Danny asked, “That’s what you call them? Ruins?”

  Kevin said, “Yeah. The important thing is they’re only a problem once in a while. You could have one in your car all your life and never notice. They’re made of these tiny particles, and the more they have, the stronger and more mischievous they get. The bigger they get, the more trouble they cause. The really big ones are called Kings. They’re the ones you have to watch out for.”

  Danny thought of 2KEWLE. Sure, he might have scored a 92, but he didn’t seem like he was going to start going around killing people.

  “Are they smart?” he asked.

  “No. How about that Ford Focus over there?”

  “Looks kind of green to me.” Danny shifted uncomfortably in his seat, which had a broken-down spring somewhere deep inside. “And so you and your friends go around wiping these things out?”

  “Yes. What about that pickup truck?”

  Danny glanced at the Ford F-150. “It’s a yellow.”

  Kevin consulted his phone. “Yellow is a sixty. Think of the visible light spectrum. Purple is the short wave end, red is the long wave, and yellow is the middle.”

  “If that guy’s car is going to try to kill him, we should tell him!”

  “A forty-five won’t kill you. You just spend a lot of time in the shop because they break down a lot.”

  “So the Ruin, whatever, is stuck in the car and can’t leave?”

  Kevin hesitated.

  “Come on,” Danny said. “I signed those papers.”

  Reluctantly, he said, “Normal Ruins just sort of stick on a car like gum on your shoe. Only the strong ones—the Kings—can move around freely. A King can jump to another car or up in the air, and land a mile or two away.”

  “How many Kings are there?”

  “Around here? Just one.”

  “Have you run into this one before?”

  A red van passed, registering 15. Kevin said, “It’s hard to say,” and then turned his gaze squarely to Danny. “Why not gay?”

  “What?”

  “Why aren’t you gay?” Kevin asked.

  Danny tried not to get defensive about it. “Why would I be? People think they can tell stuff by looking at you, but that doesn’t make it true.”

  Kevin
’s gaze didn’t waver. “So you kiss your girlfriend, maybe pet her, or whatever, and you like it?”

  Danny looked away. “It’s not like that.”

  “It’s girls or boys,” Kevin replied. “Or both if you’re bisexual.”

  “I’m not bisexual,” Danny said, hating that Kevin was trying to make him say it, admit it, when it was really none of his business.

  A gray Honda Accord pulled into the space beside them. Danny watched Mrs. Morris slide out from behind the wheel carrying a bag. She was dressed today in slim black slacks and a green blouse that set off her beautiful eyes. She leaned against his door and handed the bag to Kevin.

  “I brought you two crazy kids some chocolate milkshakes,” she said.

  “You’re a lifesaver,” Kevin said.

  Mrs. Morris’s full wattage smile turned on Danny. “Nice to see you again. I hear you’re in on all our secrets.”

  “Not all of them,” Kevin said. “Limited secret clearance.”

  She smiled even wider, as if security laws were only guidelines. “How goes the hunting?”

  “Lots of colors but no purples,” Kevin said.

  “It’s a big town,” Mrs. Morris said. “Cars zooming up and down the highway, all the back roads, in and out of shopping malls, in and out of garages. Very hard to locate on the street level.”

  “I could go up in a helicopter,” Danny suggested.

  “I doubt your special ability works more than thirty or forty feet away,” Mrs. Morris said. “Let’s try it.”

  They left the cars and climbed up the grassy slope behind the library. Danny liked walking behind Kevin and looking at his long legs. Well, his legs and his butt and the way his jacket hung off his shoulders, all of him. At the top of the hill, he was disappointed to discover that all the cars on the street looked normal.

  “I thought so.” Mrs. Morris shivered a little in the brisk wind. “I’ve never read of a case where it worked from a great distance. Still, it was worth a try.”

  Danny gazed out over Piedmont. He hadn’t thought much of the town, not after the hills and excitement of San Francisco, but that was different now that he knew there were things out there that could kill people. He looked at all the little cars, all the drivers who knew nothing. He thought about Ryan Woods and Jackie Dixon and how it must have been for them, hurtling toward the oncoming train and knowing they were going to die.