Mr. Fahrenheit (15 page)

Right then, there was a cry from the Rocket's engine.

They'd been racing at a good seventy miles per hour. Suddenly, the Rocket
lurched
, bucking so violently that Benji flew into the headrest in front of him. The engine emitted a sound like a pack of rabbits being tortured.

“Ellie,” CR said, “tell me that's not what I think it is.”

“Don't you do this,” Ellie said to the car. “Don't you dare.” The Rocket answered by lurching again. It was dropping speed at a prodigious rate. You could have counted the pine needles on the roadside trees.

“Go!” CR slammed his fist into the dashboard; the glove compartment sprang open like a jack-in-the-box, ejecting gum wrappers and DMV documents. “Come on, you piece of shit from hell,
MOVE
!”

But the Rocket wasn't in the listening mood. It staggered forward up a small rise in the road with all the power of a dying tortoise, finally just stopping dead, motionless and
dead in the middle of the road.

CR spoke with a small voice. “Are they still coming, Banjo?”

Benji didn't have to look back to know the answer. But he did. “Y-yeah.”

CR opened his door. He stepped out, staring at the road behind the Rocket, his eyes wildly wide. The headlights of the casually opulent vehicles of the Pride of Newporte High approached through the fog like illuminative doom. Benji stepped onto the road, watching his friend growing white in the gathering light. CR looked nothing like an athlete with otherworldly talents and an infinite future. He looked like a little kid, and it was so sad, and somehow frightening, that Benji had to turn away.

“Oh my God!” Benji exclaimed.

CR looked at him.

“There's a road! We can hide the car over there!”

Benji pointed at the miracle he'd just spotted: an opening in the dense forest, a hundred feet ahead of the Rocket on the other side of the small hill where the Rocket had died. It looked like an old access road, overgrown with weeds, the entry partially blocked by a small log. If you weren't looking for it—say, if you were in pursuit of people who had icy-burnt your balls and launched a horde of paintballs at you—it would have been invisible. Where it went, who knew? But it was a
chance
.

“Ohhh, thank
God
,” CR said.

“I'll push!” Benji said. “Ellie, put the car in neutral and steer toward that road!”

“Wait, I'm way stronger, shouldn't I push?” CR said.

“No, go move the log off— Zeeko, get out and help me— We just need to push the car over the hill, then we can coast down to the road—GO, CR!”

CR didn't carry on the argument: A half mile back in the fog, the SUVs finally turned onto the straightaway, the yellow
headlights now glaring directly at them like the lambent eyes of a dragon. CR sprinted to the road.

Zeeko scrambled out and joined Benji behind the car. Together, they pushed against the RustRocket's bumper with every bit of the slim measure of strength they possessed.

“
Neutral
, Ellie!” Benji shouted.

“It is in neutral!”

Oh
, Benji thought.

The Rocket inched, inched . . . Finally it crested the small rise and, as the road sloped down, the car began to move without Benji and Zeeko's efforts. They jogged to catch up and jumped into the backseat; with the log removed from the road, CR sprinted to the Rocket and leaped into the passenger seat.

“Faster, Ellie, c'mon!” CR said. Benji looked back and could see the SUVs' headlights gaining, just a few hundred feet back on the other side of the hill.

“I can't make it
go
any faster!” Ellie said.

And Benji suddenly understood there would be no grand escape, no last-minute heroics.
We're going to get caught
, he thought, closing his eyes.
We're going to get caught, and they're going to take my pod away.

“Help us,” he breathed, to God or nothing or everything. “
Please help me.
”

Benji's eyelids glowed.

He opened his eyes. The trunk area was washed in subtle light. He looked in the direction of the SUVs, expecting to see them exploding through the final barrier of the fog.

But no.

This light wasn't coming from the headlights. It originated from the bag wedged beside the steamer trunk. Benji's backpack.

The Question is in my backpack.

The gaps between the pack's metallic zipper glowed like the smile of a jack-o'-lantern that contained a neon-green flame.

Open the bag
, a voice deep inside him whispered. A high-definition image of him reaching into the bag filled his brain.

CR and Zeeko opened their doors, trying to speed up the Rocket by pushing against the ground with one leg. Mesmerized, Benji crawled over the backseat and into the cramped trunk area, sitting between the trunk door and the steamer chest, staring at the backpack.

The glow became brighter, painting the whole floor of the Rocket's trunk with radiance.

“Benji,” Zeeko said, peering over the backseat, “what are you doing?”

Open the backpack, Benji.

The backpack, untouched, slammed down on the floor of the Rocket's trunk.

The zipper screamed open.

The Question launched out, slamming into Benji's palm as if magically summoned. The tip of its straight end was green: terribly gorgeously atomically green.

“What in the name of God . . .” whispered Zeeko.

The Rocket's trunk popped open of its own accord, exposing Benji to the open air.

“
Yes, Benji, push!
” CR screamed. “
Push, push, they're almost here!
”

The headlights were just on the other side of the hill and final rim of fog.

The Question vibrated in his grip, the green light on its tip blooming. Just beneath his index finger, a small curved piece of metal sprang out of the body of the Question.

A trigger. It looks like a trigger on a gun.

“
Banjo, please, push!
”

But Benji aimed the Question out the back of Rocket, and
pulled
the trigger instead.

Like an arrow ignited, like a missile of almighty light: That was how the power burst forth from the tip of the Question.

The force of the blast blew Benji backward several inches, slamming him against the magic trunk, pinning him there.

For the first time in history, the Rocket lived up to its name: Propelled by the continuous blast of the Question, which was acting as a handheld afterburner, the Rocket hyper-zoomed forward, quaking like it might burst into a thousand particles.

“WHAT THE AAASSSS?!” Benji screamed.

Everyone in the car shared roughly the same sentiment.

“Ellie, look out, the trees!” CR screamed.

Ellie heaved the wheel, aiming the Rocket toward the access road. The tires squalled and smoked, sending the Rocket into a wild fishtail. The Question's blaze swiped across the trunks of trees on the opposite side of the road. Benji saw that the Question wasn't emitting a steady stream of energy at all: It was firing a rapid sequence of compact green ovals, which flew like the tracer bullets of an atomic machine gun. The moment the ovals struck the tree trunks, the trunks vanished, vaporized from existence. The ruined trees roared and crashed to the road like cyclopses slain.

Oh my God oh my God
, Benji thought,
this thing is a ray gu—

“Benji,” Zeeko cried from the backseat, “whatever you're doing, stop doing it!”

“I don't know how!” Benji said, but then he remembered his finger was on the trigger, and finally let go.

The Question stopped blazing instantaneously.

Still, momentum hurtled them forward on the unpaved downhill road. Ellie wove, working the brakes but skidding on
frozen earth, navigating the RustRocket on a daredevil course of trees and turns, tossing Benji back and forth in the trunk. He grabbed the headrest on the backseat and white-knuckled it.

An eternity later, the Rocket escaped the woods, shooting into some kind of open expanse. Ellie slammed the brakes; Benji pitched forward and felt something hard strike his leg. The Rocket skied over the snow for another fifteen feet. Then it came to a stop, its energy expelled, its passengers silent, its Prank Night escape complete, its tires smoking softly in the hissing snow.

Benji's whole body was electric with his heartbeat. He let go of the headrest. Swallowed several invisible cotton balls. Remembered that breathing was a thing.

He gaped at the question mark–shaped object still in his hand. The trigger had receded back into the body of the Question. It looked like unextraordinary metal. There wasn't so much as an afterglow on its tip.

Benji dropped the Question, like something deadly, onto the floor.

It's not “the Question,
” he thought, stumbling out of the trunk.
Oh my God, that's not what it is
at all.

The Rocket's doors opened.

Ellie stepped out first, shaking and pale, one hand on the Rocket to steady herself. Zeeko spilled out his own door beside her. For a moment Zeeko peered up at the sky full of stars, like a philosopher in contemplation. Then, bending at the waist like an English butler, he puked between his boots.

Still in the passenger seat, CR slammed his shoulder again and again against his door. Benji saw the paneling had been dented during their impromptu rendition of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Finally, the door wrenched open with a rusty
reeeeek
.

“Banjo, are you okay?” CR said as soon as he stepped out. He looked even more frightened than he had when the caravan of Newporte SUVs had been about to shatter his singular hope. He was staring at Benji's forehead. Benji felt it and found a thin line of blood.

“O-oh. I'm good. Fine,” Benji said woodenly.

With a look of intense relief, CR hugged Benji. After a moment, he said, “What happened? Did the gas explode?”

“What?”

CR stared at the rear of the Rocket, dumbfounded. “I thought the back of the car, like . . .” He mimed an explosion with his hands. The motion made him grimace in pain; he began rubbing his right shoulder.

He has no idea what just happened
, Benji realized. He suddenly felt afraid to tell CR. He couldn't have predicted anything like this would happen. But he'd still lied about what was in his magic trunk.

CR, still kneading his arm, took a sharp breath. “You okay?” Benji asked.

“Just yanked something in my shoulder when I was moving that log. Hey, where'd your trunk go?”

“
My friends call me a liar
. . .” somebody said softly.

They turned toward Zeeko. Benji saw that they were in a kind of valley, ringed by woods on all sides. The valley, weirdly, was studded here and there with random, waist-high metal poles.

“Benji,” said Zeeko, standing upright and wiping his wrist across his mouth, “what did you do? What was that thing?”

“What're you talking about?” CR asked, confused.

“
But my heart keeps racin' higher . . .
” that same soft voice said. But Zeeko hadn't spoken.

Neither had Ellie. In fact, Ellie looked like she couldn't have
spoken if she'd tried. Eyes huge and afraid, she moved past Zeeko, staring at something in the dark valley behind Benji. He turned to follow her gaze, and he realized several things at once.

His magic trunk lay twenty yards behind him, thrown free during the RustRocket's last moments of mayhem. The trunk's lid was open crookedly, like a broken mouth, one of the hinges busted. And beside the trunk, brighter than the steam rising around it, was the pod.

“No. No, Benji, you did not bring that,” CR said, but he was cut off by another voice, a singing rock 'n' roll voice, 1950s superstar “Bronkin'” Buck Strong, one of Papaw's very favorites, rushing toward them from every direction like a tide of amplified teenage joy:

“
My friends call me a liar! But my heart is racin' higher! Baby, when you love me, OOOO, I just catch on fire!
”

Benji was not just in a valley: He was standing in the middle of an abandoned drive-in theater.

A vast movie screen rose white and frayed at the far end of the field. A ripe crescent moon hung beyond it, veiled in clouds but visible through an ancient hole in the screen. Facing the screen and broadcasting the music were the drive-in's speakers (they looked like old radio microphones), mounted on all those endless metal poles. As Bronkin' Buck's voice floated in the air, weak blue sparks zapped from several of the speakers, like circuitry receiving a charge after an age of corrosion.

“I dreamed this place,” he whispered to himself, goose bumps rippling across his body. “Didn't I?” No, he told himself, he couldn't have. He'd just wound up here by accident, because of—

“
Yes, when I least expect it,
” sang the night, “
I just catch on FIRE!
”

Benji felt his heart halt. He looked back at the pod. “Are
you
doing this?”

A new voice sang the answer in a style that was, unmistakably, 1950s doo-wop:

Ohhhh, my dear, don't you know

That it's true?

When I speak, I speak

My words only for youuuuu.

A mystical astonishment filled Benji. “It's talking to us,” he said . . . and began to smile.

On Prank Night, in a long-lost movie wonderland just outside of Bedford Falls, Indiana, the pod from another world had spoken across the airwaves with pure teenage sound, and Benji Lightman thought:
First contact.

“
What
, exactly, is talking?” CR said softly behind Benji.

Benji started to tell him it was the pod. But that wasn't really right, was it? Until this moment, he'd thought of “the pod” as only interstellar debris, incredible and miraculous in theory, but ultimately nothing more than mindless shrapnel. Yet if it was broadcasting its answers to him, then the pod wasn't random detritus. The night of the shootdown, Benji had been witness to a spaceshipwreck, and inside that seamless cylinder was its sole survivor.