The Seven Sequels bundle

by Orca Various

  “Stud muffin,” he said, laughing.

  “I’ll say,” she’d said and kissed him.

  “Come on, Leon!” I yelled at the advancing walls. “Come on! How do I get out of here?”

  He had come over to my place to stay that night. I’d let him sleep in my bed. I have to carry him out of the chair, even help him put on his pajamas and put him under the covers. I don’t mind. It’s the least I can do. Bad Adam isn’t allowed in the room at those moments, not for one second.

  “Hey,” he’d said just before I turned out the lights to leave. “If I’m Q, then you have to be 007.”

  “I don’t think so, buddy.”

  “No, no, you are Bond with all that Wing Chun stuff you know now, and you’re a good-looking guy.”

  “Why, Leon, I didn’t know you felt that way.”

  “Shut up, A-Murph. You are good-looking to girls, though I hate to admit it. Shirley knows.”

  “Well, Shirley is pretty bright, now that you mention it.”

  “So, if I’m Q, then I have to make you something.”

  “Like a gadget?”

  “Yes, something you might even use sometime.”

  And so he had.

  It was all coming back to me, and with it came a glimmer of hope in my desperate situation.

  He’d come up with a plan for a pretty cool knife, built from the tiniest Swiss Army knife either of us had ever seen. We’d gone out together to buy it in Buffalo and then went to work on it, him instructing, me building. It didn’t have just a blade, but also a little cell battery that could be used in all sorts of situations, even with the little flashlight we’d built into it. It also had a couple of tiny pellets the knife could actually shoot. Then we’d sewn it into the lining of a pair of my boots, right behind the steel arch support.

  I had those boots on now! I hadn’t even thought of the fact that I was wearing them when I went through airport security.

  “This will be undetectable, hidden in the steel arch support,” Leon had crowed after we’d put it into my boot. “It won’t even get picked up on airport security.”

  I hadn’t intended to test that theory and neither had Leon, I’m sure. But it had gotten through security. And there it was now, in my boot, as the walls closed in on me.

  But how could I use it? It was useless, wasn’t it? Think!

  I thought of Leon again. How inventive he was, how he never seemed to give up on anything, even though he was dying.

  So I thought more about the boots. And that was when it came to me.

  For our hidden little gadget, I’d bought these cool work boots that had steel toes. I liked the look of them more than anything else. They were black, with big soles that made me look even taller than my six-foot frame, and kind of had a Doc Martens vibe to them. The steel in each boot extended farther than usual, from the toe almost halfway down the shoe, and the clerk had bragged that it was as tough as titanium—in fact, it was some sort of special hard material a million times stronger than steel or something like that. I had big feet. I looked down at them.

  The walls kept rumbling inward. They seemed to be picking up speed. They had reached the little desk and were beginning to crumple it! I looked up. The ceiling was made of steel, just like the walls. I couldn’t get out that way either.

  I bent down, barely able to fit into the space now as I hunched over. My heart was pounding, and I was dripping with sweat. I ripped off the boots and tore Leon’s knife out of the lining.

  “Save me, little buddy,” I whispered.

  I snapped open the small blade and frantically started cutting up the shoes, ripping them in half just beyond the steel toes. The knife was sharp, but the leather was good and the rubber soles were thick. I sawed with everything I had. My hands were trembling. Soon I had to stand up to work. In a minute or two, I would be dead.

  I fumbled the boots once I had them cut in half and dropped both of them. Oh, God! I could barely reach them now. I couldn’t turn sideways anymore. There was only a few inches between me and the walls. It felt like my chest and back would be touching both walls if I took a deep breath. I wondered what it would feel like, and sound like, when my bones cracked.

  My hands still shaking, I tore the steel toes out of the boots. They were each about four inches long, maybe a touch more. I lined them up so that they formed about an eight-inch length of extremely hard steel. I fitted them together so they wouldn’t shift when the walls connected with them. Then I put them between the walls and prayed.

  With my back against one wall, there was about an inch left between the other wall and my chest.

  I screamed.

  Less than an inch.

  The walls groaned.

  Half an inch.

  A fraction of an inch from my body, the walls ground to a halt, held apart by the remarkable steel toes.

  I felt like crying again.

  I was safe, but for how long? How long would I be able to stand there? How long would the steel toes keep the walls from moving? Maybe this was worse than being crushed. Maybe I would just expire as I tried to stay on my feet. It would be a horrible death.

  About a minute later, I could feel someone tapping on the outside of the building. Then I heard a voice. It was muffled. But it sounded like a girl.

  SIX

  AN ANGEL

  I yelled as loudly as I could.

  “IT’S ME! IT’S ADAM McLEAN! I’M IN HERE! YOU HAVE TO GET ME OUT!”

  “Adam McLean?” I barely heard Angel say in that lovely accent. “My God, what’s happened to the building? It’s—it’s—I’ll go get someone!”

  “NO!” I screamed. “NO! THEY ARE TRYING TO KILL ME!”

  There was a long pause. Then I think she said, “I’ll be back.” There was silence. I prayed that was what she had said. Maybe it had been, “I’m not coming back.” Maybe she was part of this whole thing; maybe she worked with Grandpa and was going to get him or his henchmen. She had seemed awfully unfriendly, awfully sour. I waited. Maybe Grandpa had ordered her to come out and save me. Maybe he was being forced to look like he hated me and wanted to kill me. Maybe it was the two henchmen who wanted me dead. Or maybe I had no idea what was going on. Only time would tell, a very short time. Would I die a horrible death or would this girl save me?

  I was surprised at how together I seemed to be. I had had my moments of falling apart, but I was holding up well under the circumstances. When I’d heard her voice, I’d actually pulled myself together even more. Maybe it was a guy thing, an ancient-caveman, biological thing—I was trying to be a man, a hero…James Bond.

  About five minutes later I heard a muffled sound above me. Angel had come back!

  “There’s a metal plate,” she said through the wall, probably pressing her lips to it, “on top of the shed. It’s about the same width as the whole building now. I’m going to try to unscrew it to see if I can open the roof.”

  “Thank you.” It was a weird thing to say, almost British, polite and 007-cool in a tight spot. I don’t know why I wasn’t just screaming. Maybe I really was the sort of guy who was cool under pressure. I hadn’t expected that, to be honest.

  I tried to set aside the fact that at any second the steel toes could collapse and the walls would crush me. Angel might even see me die this gruesome way. I prayed she was handy with that screwdriver.

  “Hurry, please!” I said as gently as possible.

  I couldn’t really hear very much, but with my hands on the walls I could feel the slight vibration from the pressure on the roof as she turned the screws. Then I could hear car horns in the distance, birds, the sound of the iron plate being pulled back. It was like hearing God speak to me.

  “Hello,” she said, looking down at me. Her face wasn’t entirely clear in the darkness. Her shades were up in her hair, which, as usual, obscured her face. Funny, I thought, she must keep those sunglasses with her all the time.

  “Hello,” I said, trying to be cool.

  She smiled at that, lo
oking slightly impressed.

  “Help pull me up,” I said.

  She must have brought out a stool or something and been standing on it in order to unscrew the metal plate. She paused for an instant and then reached down to take my hands. Her hands were small and warm. Bad Adam had some bad thoughts. I banished them and tried to help her pull me up. It was hard going. The space I was in was awfully narrow, but slowly, with her surprising strength and my agility, we were able to get my arms up above the roof of the building.

  “It would be easier if your arms were smaller,” she said, then blushed. Our faces were pretty close together at that moment. She projected a tough exterior, and that was the first time I’d seen her betray any sort of weakness.

  I looped my arms over the top of the building and with one quick motion pulled myself right out onto the now tiny roof. As I did, my Skyfall T-shirt caught on something and ripped right from the top to the bottom, tearing it completely off. I leaped down from the building and looked at Angel, who was indeed standing on a stool. We were basically eye to eye, though she peered out through her messy hair. I had no shirt on, and her flashlight was trained in my direction. She glanced down at me and blushed again. Bad Adam was very pleased. I was in pretty good shape from all the weight training I’d been doing. But Good Adam was embarrassed.

  “Sorry,” I said and kind of covered up my chest a bit with my hands.

  “That’s okay,” she replied, perhaps a little too quickly, and blushed a third time. Then she rolled her eyes. I could tell she was not too happy with herself. She struck me as the sort of girl who had maybe never had a date but was good at protecting herself, acting tough.

  “I have to get a shirt.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go into the house.”

  “But that’s where they are.”

  “They?”

  “Ssshh!”

  She gave me a surprised look. “Okay, I’ll go along with that…who do you mean by they?” She was talking in a near whisper now, as if we were in this together. She didn’t ask why. She seemed to be enjoying herself.

  “Jim and John and my grandfather.”

  “Your grandfather? Your grandfather is here? Is he visiting with you? I didn’t notice him.”

  “He’s that guy, Mr. Know.”

  “Oh.” She gave me a puzzled look. “Really? He’s never mentioned having a grandson, but then again, he doesn’t talk much.”

  “He has seven of them.”

  “Seven?”

  “In Canada and the United States. I’m the American, from Buffalo, New York.”

  “Uh, are you sure you have the right man?”

  “It doesn’t make sense to me either. Grandpa has lived in Canada since World War Two, although he flew planes for the US in the war. He died earlier this year.”

  I was so revved up that I didn’t even realize how bizarre that sounded.

  She took a step back. “Died?”

  “But…but that’s him, back there in the house. I mean, it’s him, Mr. Know.”

  “You’re crazier than he is.” She kept her distance. “He isn’t your grandfather.”

  “Yes, he is. And he and those butt-heads put me in that building and tried to kill me.”

  She looked at me carefully for a moment. “I know Mr. Know, as Jim and John call him, and he lives here in Bermuda in this house—he has forever.”

  “He’s lived here forever? Really? Do you know that for sure?”

  “Well, so I’ve been told. He’s not my father or even my relative or anything. I—”

  “How often do you see him?”

  “Not too often, actually.”

  “How often?”

  “Maybe once a week.”

  “So he could be flying in and out of here all the time.”

  “I suppose, but doesn’t that seem a little un—”

  “He’s my grandfather and he tried to kill me. Either that or those two guys are controlling him.”

  “As nuts as that sounds, nothing would surprise me.”

  She was a strange one. Most girls would have been heading for the hills by now, after the stuff I’d just said. But here she was, still talking to me, saying kind of strange things herself. I’d never met anyone quite like her.

  “Huh?” I said.

  “I live a very weird life, to say the least. There are lots of things going on behind the scenes here. I figured out some of it. I’ll tell you later. John and Jim are not always very pleasant people. I’m sort of a prisoner here myself.”

  “A prisoner?”

  “Well, not exactly. They don’t hurt me or anything. They look after me and I go to school and—”

  There was a noise from the house.

  “Get down!” I said as loudly as I dared.

  She didn’t move. “Must be the dogs.”

  “Dogs?”

  “He keeps a couple of pit bulls. I don’t have much to do with them. Jim and John walk them every now and then, but I get the impression they stay in his room with him at night so no one can attack him. He’s a really strange man—very eccentric, paranoid. He pays for everything for me and I have everything I want—at least, on the island. But he hardly ever even sees me.”

  I had wanted to sneak into the house and confront Grandpa. But pit bulls? Confronting him didn’t seem like a smart thing to try at night. I needed another plan. For now, I just had to get out of here. But I needed my stuff. I couldn’t go anywhere without my clothes, my passport, my airline pass and my Walther PPK, unloaded or not. Then I could get away and figure out what to do next.

  “Where do they sleep?”

  “He’s in a bedroom deep in the house. I’ve never even been in it. Mine is right here, near the back wall. That’s why I heard the Dahl building moving.”

  “Why do they call it the Dahl building?”

  “Roald Dahl used to visit here. He even wrote in it. Those are his pencils and paper in there, or used to be.”

  “Roald Dahl? You’re kidding, right? Why would he be here?”

  “He was a spy too. Didn’t you know that? He knew William Stephenson and Graham Greene and Ian Fleming, and he used to visit here.”

  “I’ve never heard of that first guy.”

  “The man called Intrepid? He was a Canadian, a very powerful man, maybe the greatest spy ever.”

  “First name William?” I said. I remembered the W shape on the gate at this house.

  “Yes.”

  “Bill?” I remembered my taxi driver talking about the man with a very common name.

  “I suppose so, yes. He used to live in Bermuda. I know he came here often. This house is full of spy things.”

  “Really? I need to know more about that. But first, will you help me get my things and get out of here? I have to get a hotel and regroup.”

  When she smiled, she looked like a girl who craved some adventure. She wasn’t even asking me for more explanation. “Sure,” she said and blushed again.

  We sneaked back across the dark lawn and into the house, where Angel told me that Jim and John both had keys they kept attached to their belts under their suit coats. Those keys opened everything in the house. John was a light sleeper and, other than Mr. Know’s, his bedroom was the deepest into the house; in fact, those two rooms were right next to each other. Jim, on the other hand, was in a more central room and slept like he was dead or something. Angel said she liked to get up and walk around at night, and John often appeared and asked what she was up to. She’d never ever seen Jim at night.

  “Jim is our man,” I said.

  “Our man?”

  “He’s the one we have to steal the keys from.”

  “I’ll show you the way,” she said.

  Moments later, we were inside Jim’s bedroom. We obviously couldn’t use the lights; we had to turn off Angel’s flashlight and feel our way around. We got down on our hands and knees and crawled about on the floor until we found the bed. I motioned for Angel to go back to the door, and then I groped alo
ng the edge of the bed until I reached Jim. I knew the keys wouldn’t be on his person. You couldn’t sleep with keys on your belt. I reached under his pillow, the one his head was on. Bingo! There was a ring of about five keys nestled there. I was so excited that I pulled them out fast, and as I did, my elbow met a lamp on the night table and knocked it over. The room had a thick rug, so the lamp didn’t make a sound when it hit the floor. But somehow, it connected with the switch.

  The light came on.

  Jim opened his eyes wide and looked at me. Then he leaped to his feet. I stepped back. I heard Angel inhale suddenly and whisper, “Oh god!” behind me.

  Jim smiled. He looked like a middle linebacker in pajamas.

  Believe it or not, I relaxed. That’s what my Wing Chun master taught me: relax in a time of stress or combat. Use the element of surprise. This guy would have no idea that I could fight, and he certainly wouldn’t expect me to fight him, of all people. He’d expect me to run or curl up into a ball or, at the very least, get defensive. I thought of the most lethal, aggressive move I knew, and I knew quite a few.

  Attack before he expects it!

  I spun on a dime and nailed him with a roundhouse kick, the flat part of the top of my right foot splat against his temple. He went down like a ton of bricks and lay still. Still breathing, but out cold. Perfect. I felt a little upset seeing him lying there, not moving at all. But Bad Adam was excited.

  I turned and saw Angel right next to me. She had moved forward instinctively. She was so close that our faces were no more than a couple of feet apart.

  “Wow,” she whispered.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go to the office.”

  I turned off the light. She reached out and took my hand and led me through the dark house to the big office. When we got there, I rushed over to the desk and pulled open the top drawer, left side. Sure enough, my cell phone was there. And my bag was on the floor right next to the desk. But I stopped for a second. I could smell something, something familiar. A shirt was hanging over the chair right beside me. It must have belonged to Mr. Know. A light scent of aftershave or deodorant was coming from it. My heart sank. It was Grandpa’s! There was no doubt about it. It smelled like him. I had been trying to convince myself that the man who had tried to have me killed wasn’t really him, that he was a clone or something, or an identical twin, or an incredible three-dimensional virtual-reality image—anything. But this was his scent; this was how he’d smelled when he’d sat me on his knee and read The Little Prince and The BFG or Fantastic Mr. Fox to me when I was a child. Mr. Know was him, there was no doubt. Something deep and truly sinister was going on here. You are a traitor, someone had written. You deserve to die. The whole thing scared the living daylights out of me. Someone had known who and what he really was and had put it down in writing. Except Grandpa had hidden it. He’s alive, I thought, and maybe does deserve to die. If only the other guys knew all this. They all thought he was dead! But I couldn’t stand around thinking about it. I had to keep moving. I pulled another T-shirt out of my bag and slipped it on, pulled on a pair of ratty old sneakers I had brought and then stuffed everything else into the bag. I was good to go. But Angel stopped me.