Relic

by Steve Whibley

  “We’ll have to sneak out around midnight,” I said. I pointed at a small gathering of trees a dozen or so meters from where we were standing. “Let’s just meet right there at midnight. It won’t take long to bike down there.” I scratched my chin.

  Lisa pointed at Colin. “Don't forget your phone.”

  “Yeah, yeah, don’t worry, I won’t.” He rubbed his hands together and smiled. “C’mon, guys, this is great. It’s happening. Show some enthusiasm. We’re going to save some people tonight. Aren’t you excited?”

  Lisa and I looked at each other, then back to Colin, and we both answered at the same time.

  “No.”

  Chapter 21

  Mr. Overton had called from the museum to tell my mom that he appreciated my apology, so when I got home my parents were in a good mood.

  “He said he wouldn’t let Sok back into the museum,” I said during dinner.

  “Sock?” Becky asked. She turned to my mom. “He just called that monk a sock?”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s S-O-K, and it’s his name, genius.”

  “At least you tried, Dean.” My mom smiled. “I’m very proud of you.”

  “Me too,” my dad said. “It was very grown up of you, Dean.”

  “Yeah, you’re a real big boy now,” Becky chimed in. She clapped her hands and added, “Maybe you’ll stop asking to sleep in Mom and Dad’s room now.”

  “At least I don’t play with pieces of poop,” I said.

  “Gah!” Becky yelled. “How many times do I have to tell you that they’re fossils? Fossils are like stones. They’re perfectly clean to touch.”

  My dad chuckled. I think sometimes he liked it when Becky and I fought. Like maybe he thought we were a couple of test subjects in an experiment on sibling rivalry or something. Or maybe there was a book out there in psychotherapy land that said it was healthy when brothers and sisters fought. I wondered if he’d think it was healthy if I tied my sister up and tossed her in a closet.

  I spent the rest of the night trying to look innocent, which wasn’t easy because my nerves made me jump every time someone spoke to me, and I had a constant feeling of nausea that would only let up if I kept moving. As a result, I paced every room in the house. Becky said it looked like I had to pee and kept asking me if I was wearing my special rubber underwear. When Becky turned on some modern-day princess movie later in the evening, I pretended to be annoyed and said I was going to bed. I pulled on a pair of dark jeans and a black, long-sleeved shirt, pulled the covers up to my chin, and waited.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d snuck out of the house at night, but it was the first time I’d done it so early. By eleven o’clock, most of the house was silent. My parents often read in bed, and if I listened carefully, I thought I could hear them talking. I waited another forty-five minutes, during which I tried my best not to move an inch. It was the longest forty-five minutes of my life.

  A few minutes before midnight, I slid out of my covers and positioned my pillow and some clothing under my blankets to make it look like I was still there. I slipped on my shoes and climbed onto the roof.

  Even though it had stopped raining shortly after dinner, the shingles were still slick. I had to crawl to the edge. Just below the rain gutter was a wall of lattice that rose up behind my mom’s small flowerbed. It used to be covered with this big climbing vine, but my dad chopped the vine out when it started taking root in the side of the house and cracking the mortar. The lattice was as easy to climb down as a ladder.

  As soon as my feet hit dirt, I grabbed my bike and raced to the meeting spot.

  ***

  Colin was already waiting, which didn’t surprise me at all. His room was on the first floor of his house, so he just had to jump out of a window. Also, his parents were the soundest sleepers in the world. A couple years ago, he had a sleepover at his house with at least a dozen guys from school. We played video games all night long, and no matter how loud we got, we could hear Colin’s dad snoring upstairs. I figured his mom must sleep with earplugs or something. Colin could probably sneak out wearing drums as shoes and not get caught.

  “Where’s Lisa?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “She sent an email. Her parents are still awake. She can’t get out. I told her I’d text her when we got there.”

  “Darn it,” I muttered, and then asked, “Did you hear from Archer?” I knew the answer. If Colin had heard from Archer, he’d have called me right away. Still, I had to ask.

  He shook his head. “You know I haven’t.”

  “Why didn’t he call back?” I asked.

  “Oh, relax, Dean, it’s going to be fine. The plan’s so simple it’s almost not even a plan.” He smiled, full of confidence. “We’re just going to call the police if the burglars show up.” He grabbed a backpack from the ground and threw it over his shoulder. “C’mon, let’s go.”

  “Wait, what’s in the bag?” I asked.

  “Just stuff we might need. I’ll show you when we get there.”

  Stuff we might need could be anything in Colin’s world. His imagination was so unpredictable that he might have had a live animal in there with a perfectly reasonable (in his mind) explanation for why it was necessary and how it could be used. I decided not to push it and climbed on my bike.

  We kept to the alleys and side streets, riding as hard as we could. It took us fifteen minutes to get to the park. Colin didn’t slow down and biked straight through the gate. I was right behind him. There was a shout of pain, and I’d barely squeezed the brakes when my bike hit a mass on the ground and I went over the handlebars.

  Colin and I disentangled ourselves from our bikes, and the soft thing we’d hit jumped up. A homeless man, who must have been sleeping near the gate, was on his feet with a clear bike tread painted in mud across his tattered gray hoodie. He shouted some slurred curses that I couldn’t understand and staggered to the back of the playground, into the shadows.

  I brushed myself off and whispered, “Got anything in your little bag to get rid of him?”

  “No,” Colin said, gazing in the direction the man had gone. “I have some firecrackers. Maybe we can scare him off with them or something.”

  “You don’t really have firecrackers in there, do you?”

  He smirked. “Next time I’ll bring something for him. A sandwich, maybe.”

  “A sandwich?” I asked. “And what do you mean next time? There better not be a next time.”

  I peeked over the bushes. The museum was dimly lit and looked completely vacant. There might have been guards roaming around in there, but there weren’t any out front. “The front,” I said out loud, realizing our mistake. “How could we be so stupid?”

  “Huh?” Colin said, looking over my shoulder.

  “What if the burglars come from the back? We won’t even see them. And if it is Sok robbing the place, he might come from the back because that’s where the Buddha head is on display.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t think it was Sok,” Colin said.

  I shook my head. “No, I said there are a lot of valuable things in the museum, and it could be anyone going after almost anything.”

  “It doesn’t matter because I got us covered.” Colin smiled, then hunched and unzipped his bag. He pulled out a couple of walkie-talkies and handed one to me. “I wasn’t sure if we’d need these things, but I thought we might. I’ll go around back since you’re still kinda slow with that leg of yours.”

  “My leg’s fine,” I said. Though I realized I did kind of favor it when I walked, and Colin was a bit faster than me anyway.

  He shook his head. “If the robbers spot us, we’ll have to run. I’ll call the police if I see anything, and if you see anything over here, just tell me and I’ll call 9-1-1.”

  I glanced into the open bag and caught a glimpse of rope and several rolls of duct tape. I was going to ask if he was planning on kidnapping someone and tying them to a chair, but decided not to waste any more time listening to Colin’s exp
lanations. “Wait,” I said, “what if that homeless guy comes back?”

  Colin shrugged. “I dunno. Strike up a conversation. Ask him what his hobbies are.” He checked his watch. “Are you ready? It’s already twenty after twelve. I better get back there. You said someone dies around 12:40, right? So they could get here any second. They might already be here.” He didn’t wait for me to answer any of his questions. Instead he jumped onto his bike and pedaled through the gate. I watched him disappear around the block.

  “Ask him what his hobbies are?” I muttered. “That’s what I should do if the crazy homeless guy comes back to kill me? Thanks, Colin, real helpful.” I would have preferred if he’d given me a can of bear spray or something. I glanced nervously at the shadows and shivered as I imagined the homeless man poised to pounce.

  I complained to myself for a couple more minutes and even had time to wonder if I would have visions of myself if I was going to die. Then a gray moving truck pulled up and backed slowly into the narrow alley between the museum and the bakery.

  “Colin,” I said into the walkie-talkie. “There’s a truck over here, get ready.” I thought it was weird that Colin didn’t answer, but imagined him poised with his phone in one hand, walkie-talkie in the other, just waiting for the word.

  It could be a delivery truck, I told myself. It could be a delivery truck for the bakery. Or maybe it was a truck dropping off something. It could be anything, I told myself. Maybe it’s—

  Something caught my eye on the roof of the truck, and it wasn’t until I blinked twice that I saw two figures, dressed in black—just like the figure in my vision—pull themselves onto the top of the truck and jump to the museum’s roof.

  Chapter 22

  “Call the police. Call the police!” I whispered forcefully into the walkie-talkie.

  Garbled words punctuated with static responded to my message.

  “Colin? Did you get that? Colin?”

  I cursed myself for not testing the thing before Colin left—or for letting Colin leave in the first place. If he’d heard me, the police could be on their way, but if he was only getting static and half of every third word, he wouldn’t have a clue what I was saying.

  “Colin!” I said again, more desperate this time. “Call the police.”

  Nothing.

  One of the robbers pressed himself against the wall of the second floor and peered at the street below while the other one crept across the roof. Then the first robber hunched and seemed to be struggling with something. There must be a way in up there, I decided, a hatch maybe. I imagined them crawling through a heating vent and dropping down into a massive gunfight where everyone died. I couldn’t let that happen. I ran to the gate, intending to shout at them in hopes of scaring them off, but instead I stepped on something round and hard and rolled my ankle, stumbling against the fence. When I looked up, the thieves were gone.

  I tried the walkie-talkie again. This time I wasn’t whispering. “Colin, you dolt, they’re inside. Call the police!”

  I plucked a fist-sized stone from the grass—probably the very one I’d just rolled my ankle on—and rushed into the street. I was acting on impulse now. “Hey!” I shouted. “Hey, I see you up there!” I didn’t see them. I knew they were already making their way into the building.

  I cocked my arm and was about to throw the rock at the roof, hoping that maybe luck or some divine intervention would direct the stone through the hatch the robbers had used, or at least create enough of a clatter to make them turn back.

  Then I decided it wouldn’t work. I’d be lucky to get the stone onto the roof. I adjusted my aim and focused on the large glass windows at the front of the building and threw with everything I had.

  Someone yelled, “No! Don’t!” from my right, just as the rock left my hand. Half a second later, I was tackled off the curb and onto the street. There was the familiar sound of shattering glass, and a second thereafter, a strident alarm sliced the air around me.

  I lay on the pavement and blinked, hoping the stars would stop swirling. The guy who’d tackled me pushed himself to his feet. He wore a dark jacket and a black ski mask, just like in my vision. “What did you do?” he asked in a familiar accent.

  “Sok?” I asked. “It is you, isn’t it?”

  He growled and brought his hands behind his head and then turned back to the museum. “You ruined everything,” he muttered.

  I staggered to my feet and quickly grabbed the top of his hood and pulled. The fabric came off like a Band-Aid. “I knew it!” I said.

  Sok looked dumbly back at first, and then glared frozen daggers at me. “What are you doing here?” he spat. “This could’ve been over. Why’d you have to get involved?”

  “You’re mad at me? You’re the one breaking—” Before I could really tell him off, the truck in the alley roared to life. Sok spun around and sprinted away, throwing himself into the cab before it sped around the corner. Shouts carried over the sirens from inside the museum, and I scrambled across the street back to the park and dove through the gate. I risked a glance through the bushes just long enough to see a security guard stepping through the broken window, shining his flashlight one way, then the next. A police car, lights flashing, screeched around the corner.

  “Colin,” I muttered. He was somewhere on the other side of the building. I hoped he’d had the good sense to run when the alarms went off. Who was I kidding? Knowing him, he’d probably found a way into the museum and was hanging out in one of the displays, completely oblivious to everything.

  Another police car raced down the street and skidded to a stop in front of the museum. The blue and amber lights painted the leaves on the trees and bushes like Christmas ornaments. I spun around to grab my bike and nearly jumped out of my skin. My bike was where I’d left it, but it wasn’t alone. The homeless man was crouched beside it, stroking the seat and handlebars like the bike was some kind of wheeled pet.

  “Um, sir?” I whispered, “I really need my bike.”

  The man jerked around and bared his teeth like a mother bear protecting her cub.

  “Whoa!” I said, still hushed. “Okay, okay, look.” I held out Colin’s useless walkie-talkie. “I’ll trade you. The bike for this, um, this super cool…” The voices from over the fence seemed louder, like someone was coming over to check out the park. While I was distracted, the homeless bicycle fanatic lunged out and snatched the walkie-talkie from my hand.

  “Oh, c’mon, man,” I begged. “Just give me back my bike.” I risked a step closer, and the crazy hobo reached into the ripped pocket of his jacket and pulled out a long, narrow object that, at first glance, looked a lot like a knife. He lunged forward and grabbed me by the collar with his empty hand and then shoved me away. I stumbled backwards but managed to stay on my feet. A flash of light illuminated his hand. I saw what he was holding: a toothbrush.

  “Back,” he growled, brandishing his weapon like some crazed dentist.

  The toothbrush was silver, which I figured was why it looked like a blade. It had flattened bristles that were as brown as the man’s teeth. I wasn’t afraid that he’d try to stab me with it, but I was kind of worried that he might try to brush my teeth with it.

  A radio crackled through the bushes. I didn’t have time for this. Even if I somehow managed to wrestle my bike away from him, I’d never get it over the fence before the cops saw me. I turned, sprinted across the grass, and threw myself over the fence into the narrow alley behind the park. I landed in a heap on broken pavement but kept my mouth firmly closed. I hadn’t had a chance to move before I heard a female voice shout, “Don’t move!” At first I thought she was yelling at me and I froze, but then she shouted, “He has a knife!”

  She was talking about the homeless guy.

  I stood up and was about to run when the very last thing I wanted to happen happened…everything around me turned gray.

  Chapter 23

  “No,” I said under my breath. “No, it can’t be happening.” Sok wasn’t anywh
ere around. I’d seen him get into the truck, and it was long gone by now. I jerked my head around one way, then the other, in the unlikely event that Sok or maybe that security guard had followed me into the alley. They hadn’t. I checked my watch: 12:48. It was after the time the security guard was supposed to die.

  Archer’s words hammered my skull: “If you touch someone for the first time moments before they’re going to die, you’ll still be warned.”

  “The homeless guy,” I said, remembering that he’d just shoved me moments earlier.

  As if on cue, the policewoman shouted from across the bushes, “Put down your weapon!” She was talking about the toothbrush. He was probably just trying to protect his pet bike. The way I saw it, I had two options: find another rock and throw it at the police officer and hope I hit her (or the homeless guy), or scream like a crazy person and hope she didn’t shoot anyone…especially me. Oh, and for both those options, I had to run as fast as I could, because no matter what happened, if I got caught, I’d be in a lot of trouble. Unless I was trying to hit a plate glass window, my aim sucked. I decided on option number two.

  “It’s not a knife!” I screamed. “It’s just a toothbrush!” I poked my head through the bushes. “Don’t shoot!”

  A bang and a flash of light flared in the park. It sounded like an exploding stick of dynamite, and I’m embarrassed to admit it, but as soon as it happened, I started running. I didn’t look back, and I didn’t hesitate for a single step. I just surged forward. There were shouts behind me, but I’m not sure if they were directed at me or if they were just people shouting about the gunshot. I didn’t wait around to find out.

  Every cop in the area must’ve been at the playground, because I didn’t even try to stay in the dark alleys or side streets. At one point, I was running right down the middle of a road, and I didn’t see any police. I just ran as hard and as fast as I could, hoping that somehow I could outrun my thoughts, or that my pounding footsteps could silence the voice in my head shouting that the homeless man had just been shot, and it was my fault. I’d failed again. It was my bike he was trying to protect, and if I’d just taken the time to park it somewhere else, none of this would have happened.