Kings of Ruin

by Sam Cameron

Rachel’s phone rang. She said into it, “Junior, stop it! I’m not going to talk to you!”

  Junior was nudging into Danny’s lane, trying to get him to pull into the extremely narrow shoulder. Danny felt himself being squeezed over. Gravel spun under the right tires, but he didn’t lose control, didn’t cede it. Headlights appeared ahead of them as some unsuspecting motorist headed up Turkey Hill.

  “You’re going to get us killed!” Rachel shouted into her phone.

  Danny wasn’t sure that Junior saw the oncoming driver. If they collided, one or both of them might spin into him. They might crash over the guardrail into the ravines and houses below, or blow up in some fiery explosion.

  In just a few seconds, they might all die.

  “Hold on,” he warned them. “This is going to be tight.”

  He braked, groped for a gear stick that wasn’t there, and fell far back so Junior could move into his lane.

  The oncoming car blasted its horn now, a long, steady blare of noise that sounded like panic. Junior braked, swerved into the lane ahead of Danny, and missed the stranger by what looked like only inches. Then Junior braked again, the idiot. Danny had no choice but to either brake, swerve, or ram into him.

  He tried braking and swerving both, but the Camaro fishtailed, bounced off rock, slid into the guardrail, and plunged downward.

  Danny heard Laura and Rachel screaming. He probably screamed, too. The Camaro sailed downward, touched ground, bounced, rattled, sailed again. Tree branches scraped against the roof and punched through the windows. The front end of the car barreled into dark, cold water that flooded up through the floorboards.

  “Out, out!” Danny yelled.

  “We’re going to drown!” Eric tried shouldering open his door, but it was jammed. “We’re sinking!”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  In the dark, wet, cold of the wreck Rachel said, “We’re not sinking, idiot.”

  She sounded a lot calmer than Danny felt. Danny peered over the steering wheel and saw she was right. The pond they’d landed in was too shallow to swallow the car. That knowledge didn’t stop his heart from thudding wildly inside his chest. He couldn’t believe they weren’t dead.

  Maybe they really had died. Maybe they were ghosts.

  “I think I’m bleeding,” Eric said, making a strange snuffling noise.

  Danny flipped on the dome light. Eric’s nose was bleeding. Rachel and Laura both were unhurt. Danny’s wrist hurt, but no worse than it had all day. He reached over, fished some napkins out of the glove compartment, and gave them to Eric.

  “Let’s get out,” Rachel said. “I’m getting wet.”

  The doors were jammed with mud, but the electric windows still worked. They climbed out and slipped down into the water and mud. The night was cold and windy all around them. They’d landed in a deep ravine thick with trees and bushes, with the Camaro half in and half out of the pond and no clear path up to the road or down the hillside.

  “I’ve got to call my mom,” Laura said shakily, flipping open her cell phone.

  But she couldn’t get a signal. None of them could.

  Danny said, “I’ll climb out. Go for help.”

  “Me, too,” Rachel said.

  He looked at her shoes. “You can’t climb in those.”

  She slipped them off. “Lead on.”

  The first dozen feet up the slope weren’t so bad, though he couldn’t grab for branches well with his left hand and needed the right hand for the flashlight he’d found in the glove compartment. Rachel was far more nimble, though the mud under their feet was slippery and torn up from the Camaro’s descent. It was several long minutes before they reached the road, where Rachel used her phone to call 911.

  A fire engine showed up four minutes later, followed by a police car.

  “Our friends are down there,” Rachel said, pointing down the ravine. “My brother here swerved to avoid a deer.”

  The firefighters and policemen immediately set to work. Danny gaped at Rachel and demanded, “You’re lying for Junior?”

  She lifted her chin defiantly. “I’d do the same for you. Getting him in trouble isn’t going to make things any better. Just say it was a deer.”

  “He forced us off the road!”

  “It was an accident. If you get Junior arrested, there will be all kinds of problems, and that won’t be good for his daddy’s career or for mine.”

  “No.” Danny folded his arms. “I’m not going to protect him.”

  “It’s a little lie,” Rachel said. “You’ve got your secret gay boyfriend, and this is just something in return. You owe me.”

  Danny’s fists clenched at his side.

  Soon, the firefighters had Eric and Laura back up on the road, though it was going to be up to a tow truck to retrieve the Camaro. Neither Eric nor Laura were hurt. Rachel pulled them both aside to tell them to lie about Junior. A burly policeman came over to give Danny a field sobriety test.

  The cop explained the procedures and then said, “Extend your arms, extend your index fingers, and bring both of them to the tip of your nose.”

  Embarrassed and annoyed, Danny carefully brought his fingers to his nose. His left wrist twinged as he did so, but he ignored it.

  “Say the alphabet backwards from Z,” the cop said.

  Just then, Roger Rat’s black Mercedes pulled up behind the fire engine, and Danny’s night went from bad to worse.

  Chapter Thirty

  Roger parked on the shoulder. When he got out, he looked tremendously angry. He saw Danny but went directly to Rachel, who threw her arms around him.

  “Daddy!” she said. “I was so scared.”

  Mom got out and came to Danny. She looked cold in her evening gown and jacket, and the expression on her face was just as angry and worried as Roger’s.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he muttered.

  “I’m his mother,” she said to the cop. “Carol Kelly Anderson.”

  The cop said, “It doesn’t look like he was drinking, ma’am. He says he swerved to avoid a deer and the other kids confirmed it.”

  Danny glanced over at Eric and Laura. Neither of them would meet his gaze.

  “Trouble is,” the cop continued, “he doesn’t have a driver’s license.”

  Roger came over with Rachel in tow. Her mascara had streaked down her face from tears, and she wouldn’t meet Danny’s eyes.

  “Rachel’s going home to her mother’s,” Roger said. “We can clear all this up later, when people have calmed down.”

  Mom’s eyebrows drew together and creased into a worry line. “I’d like to clear up some of it now. Rachel, was Danny drinking tonight?”

  Rachel was peering down at her damaged high heel shoes. “No, ma’am.”

  That, at least, was the truth.

  Mom said, “Rachel, were you drinking?”

  Roger said, “Not here, Carol.”

  “Yes, here,” Mom said firmly. “Danny made a mistake tonight, and he’s going to pay for it. But he’s not the only one who made bad decisions.”

  Rachel tugged on her sleeve. “Daddy, can’t we go now? It’s really cold.”

  Roger looked at the police officer and his nametag. “Is there anything more you need, Officer Johnson?”

  “No, sir,” the cop said. “Except your son here better see to his wrist. Looks like a sprain.”

  Danny looked down at his wrist in surprise. It was swollen and red, and now that he was paying attention, it really did hurt.

  “It’s okay,” he assured his mother.

  She frowned. “You probably need X-rays.”

  Which is how Danny and Mom ended up in the emergency room while Roger took Rachel to her mom. Mom handled all the paperwork at the admitting desk while Danny sat slumped in the bright, noisy waiting room. He was still mad about Junior and being blamed for something that wasn’t his fault.

  Mom came back from the desk and sat beside him.

  “It shouldn’t be long,
” she said, which was optimistic. The waiting room was full with sick people, and a crying baby, and a woman who looked very pregnant. Mom tapped her golden shoes on the linoleum and fixed her eyes on the TV bolted to a high shelf. “I want you to know that I’m glad you’re okay. But you, Roger, and I are going to have to have a long series of talks about what happened tonight.”

  Danny sank lower into his seat.

  It didn’t help things at all that another police officer showed up to get more information just as Roger returned from dropping Rachel off. Mom, Roger, and the cop all conferred in the corner, sending Danny looks every now and then. He could imagine what they were saying about him, and none of it was good. It was a relief when a tall, gray-haired nurse named Barbara came to collect him.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute,” Mom promised Danny.

  Barbara took him through some swinging doors to a large area separated into cubicles by white curtains. She helped him sit on an exam table, and in quick succession took his pulse, stuck a thermometer in his ear, and measured his blood pressure.

  “The doctor will be here soon,” she said before leaving.

  Soon was a relative term. Danny sat on the table for nearly a half hour, no sign of a physician. Maybe everyone had forgotten about him. He was debating getting up and walking out when his phone rang. Kevin’s number flashed on the screen.

  “Are you in the hospital?” Kevin demanded, sounding both worried and angry. “I just left you! What happened?”

  “Nothing,” Danny said. “A little ditch. A little accident. How did you know?”

  “The police scanners. We monitor all of them. Was it the King?”

  “No. It was Moon Junior being an idiot.”

  “But you’re okay?”

  “Yeah.” Danny decided not to mention his wrist. “I’ll be going home soon.”

  “Go home, stay put, and stay out of trouble,” Kevin said. “Call me tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” Danny said, thinking it was kind of nice that Kevin cared enough to sound mad at him.

  Things got less nice when the doctor announced that Danny’s wrist had a hairline fracture and they put it in a soft cast. He definitely wasn’t going to be practicing guitar for a while. The drive home was a blur. Roger and Mom talked in low voices that he couldn’t hear over the sound of Moon Conway crooning on the radio. When they got home, everyone trudged inside.

  Comet met them, barking and spinning in circles.

  “I’ll take him out to pee,” Mom said to Danny. “Go to bed and we’ll talk about all this in the morning.”

  Roger said, “We’ve got to be out of the house by eight for the Country Harvest breakfast.”

  “Yes, I know,” Mom said, sounding impatient.

  Danny hauled himself upstairs. He was too tired and disappointed to do anything but toe off his shoes, throw himself on the bed and stare up at the ceiling. Eric’s car was wrecked, Danny would probably have to go to court again, Junior was going to get off scot-free, 2KEWLE was nowhere around, and the King was still on the loose.

  On the other hand, Kevin had almost kissed him. That was the best part of the day.

  Comet came in and jumped up onto the bed with wet feet.

  “Good boy,” Danny said.

  The dog licked Danny’s face and settled against his arm. Danny reached over to turn off the light and saw the digital clock: 12:05 a.m.

  “And happy birthday to me,” he said.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  2KEWLE was not having a good night.

  He’d hitchhiked with Danny and Eric up to the mansion at Junior’s, sensing the King’s presence like an enormous blinking light on the horizon. At the party, he’d had to roll along dozens of cars until he found the one he was looking for: a cherry red Corvette with custom wheels.

  King #5 roused inside the engine and peered at 2KEWLE with disdain. He’d found this car after leaping out of the police car on the bridge; he liked it and wanted to stay.

  2KEWLE rolled forward and beeped for Danny.

  “What are you?” asked a voice, and 2KEWLE found himself lifted in the air. “Ain’t you cute? My little brother might like you.”

  2KEWLE beeped and struggled, but Buddy Hunt didn’t care. He casually tossed him into his trunk and then turned around to yell at Junior.

  “Hey, Junior! Want to race?”

  The race didn’t happen, but that didn’t cheer 2KEWLE much. He was still stuck in the Corvette’s trunk while Buddy drove home. He could feel the King lurking in the engine, enjoying the ride. He expected it to take over and maybe ram them into a tree or a concrete barrier. Kings liked to do that. But this King was quiet, maybe gathering up its strength, and Buddy reached home safely.

  The Corvette was left in the driveway overnight.

  2KEWLE threw himself at the trunk latch for hours but couldn’t get it open.

  Despairing, he waited for morning to come.

  *

  Kevin couldn’t sleep.

  Everyone else in the Pit was tucked into bed. The light had gone out in Ford’s room a half hour ago, and Gear was snoring through the walls. Mrs. Morris never snored, but Kevin was sure she was asleep with her black eye mask and the white noise machine she used to screen out irritations.

  At first, he couldn’t sleep because he’d been thinking about Danny. Danny, who was now officially not straight, but afraid to tell anyone. That sucked for him.

  After that, he was thinking about Danny’s silly questions. How do you know there’s not more to the story? As if Ford or Gear or Mrs. Morris would ever keep information from him.

  But maybe they didn’t know, either.

  Kevin went to the kitchen to get something to drink. After that, he drifted to the tech console, and then he tapped in a search or two.

  He was ready to turn everything off and go to bed when he decided to check on the built-in GPS in Danny’s phone.

  It lit up on a map: the emergency room, Piedmont General Hospital.

  On the phone, Danny insisted he was fine. A little ditch, a little accident. When he asked how Kevin knew, Kevin gave his own little white lie. He didn’t think Danny would appreciate knowing there was a sensor in his phone, even if it was for his own good.

  “Go home, stay safe, and stay out of trouble,” Kevin told him, maybe more gruffly than he should.

  Kevin double-checked the police scanner and reports to make sure the King wasn’t involved. After that, he pulled up the record on Danny’s phone since it had first been turned on. The map lit up, starting with Danny’s house, then downtown, then up the hill with Mrs. Morris, then back to his house, and then to an address Kevin didn’t recognize. After that, a meandering trail up to Moon Conway’s mansion.

  Kevin searched on the address. It was a rental. The owner lived in Knoxville, and there was no information on the current tenant.

  How do you know there’s not more to the story?

  Kevin decided to get some fresh air.

  *

  An old man was waiting for Kevin in the living room of the old Victorian house.

  “You’re rather young to be from the government,” he said, his voice a rasp.

  Kevin had found the house easily, hesitated only a little bit at the unlocked door, and then decided that he couldn’t come this far and not go inside. The house was very quiet. He didn’t see anything that would have brought Danny here until he got to this room, with its high ceilings and heavy drapes and electronic parts scattered everywhere.

  The old man looked harmless enough, but thin and sickly. He reminded Kevin of someone who should be in the hospital, not staying up to greet midnight visitors. A tiny gold helicopter was hovering over his right shoulder, some kind of radio-controlled toy.

  Like Danny’s toy buggy, maybe. Kevin brought his FRED up to measure it. The helicopter beeped in alarm, then ducked behind the old man’s armchair.

  “Don’t be silly,” the old man said, coughing weakly. “He’s not going to hurt you.”

  Kevin
wasn’t sure who he was trying to assure. “Who are you?”

  “Eliot Beaudreau,” the man replied. “Of Flint, Michigan. Be sure they spell that first name correctly. One t and one l only.”

  Kevin carefully scanned the rest of the room. Nothing showed up on his FRED. The helicopter peeked up over Beaudreau’s shoulder, its blades whirring very quietly, but then ducked down again.

  “Mr. Beaudreau, do you know what Ruins are?” Kevin asked.

  Beaudreau choked for a moment. No, not choked. Laughed. Kevin’s face burned.

  “They’re nothing to laugh about,” Kevin said. “They kill people.”

  With a wave of his hand and a tight clutch on his handkerchief, the old man regained his composure.

  “They’re like people, boy. The bad ones kill innocent men, women, and children. The good ones try to stop them. Just like humans.”

  Now Kevin knew where Danny had gotten his questions. “You really believe that?” he asked skeptically.

  “Believe it? I know it.” The old man coughed again, a deep and unnerving hack. “I’ve been in the assembly plants. I worked the lines. For twenty years now, I’ve tried to get the government to listen to me, but all they have is suspicion and hate.”

  The helicopter had slowly elevated itself as Beaudreau spoke. Kevin could see that it had a small label on it: CHOPR. It was hovering near its owner’s shoulder in a way that almost looked worried.

  “I can see you don’t believe me,” Beaudreau said. “It isn’t easy, disbelieving what you’ve been taught. But there are good Ruins just as surely as there are bad ones. I should know.”

  Kevin eyed the nearby doorways. “There are more here?” he asked warily. It suddenly occurred to him that this might be a big trap of some kind, and he’d walked right into it.

  Beaudreau shook his head and rasped for enough air to speak. “I’ve sent them all away now. The end of our friendship has come.”

  That didn’t sound good. In the dim light from one old lamp, Beaudreau’s lips had taken on a blue tinge.

  Reaching for his phone, Kevin said, “I’m going to call the paramedics—”