Mr. Fahrenheit (20 page)

R
un.

But paralysis seemed to have fused him to the spot.

Run.

But what had happened here? Where was Papaw?

Run
; but what if he's dead?

The cold breeze haunted the kitchen again.

Benji turned slowly. Through the ruined window, he could see Papaw's cruiser. The door of the garage was open. The covered car Papaw had been working on this morning was gone.
Then . . . maybe he got away
, Benji thought, his brain seeming roughly a million miles away from his skull.

Away from what?

Away from here.

!!RUN!!

And finally, Benji did.

His footfalls splashing, he stumbled, tried to catch himself as he hit the floor, and accidentally activated one of the card-shooters hidden in his trick-loaded tuxedo sleeves. A blizzard of Bicycle cards fluttered out before he picked himself up and
dashed down the hallway.

He reached the porch and opened his mouth to scream for Zeeko to run. He stopped himself, his gaze snapping left, right, his nerve endings ignited with paranoid terror.
Is McKedrick here?
Benji didn't see anyone, not even Zeeko; the rear silver door to the X-ray mobile was shut.

He heard a gunshot.

Except, no, not a gunshot: Perhaps a mile to the east, a yellow firework bloomed, a billion frantic dandelion sparks descending like a swarm. It was five thirty p.m. in Bedford Falls, and the homecoming parade had begun.

Benji walked toward the street, not quite daring to run, feeling vulnerable in the wide space. He reached the X-ray mobile, found the rear door locked, knocked on it. “Zeeko!” he said softly, but new fireworks boomed, drowning out his voice. “
Zeeko!
” he said louder, and pounded.

Zeeko's grinning face appeared in the small porthole-shaped window in the door. “What's the magic worrrrd?” he said.

“Open the door!”

“Incorrect.”

“
Zeeko, OPEN IT!
”

“One more time from the top, dahling.”

“
Zeeko, OPEN THE FREAKING DOOR—PLEASE!
”

Zeeko congratulated Benji and began a brief lecture on the virtues of patience as he finally cracked the door. Benji threw the door wide and launched himself into the vehicle and slammed the door behind him.

“What the eff's wrong with you?” Zeeko said.

“Something happened to my Papaw,” Benji said, peering out the porthole window onto the street. His panting breath fogged it.

“What?”

“The house is wrecked up. Some kind of fight.” Benji tried to wipe the fog from the window but only succeeded in smearing it. He looked back at Zeeko. “The agent knows now, somehow he found out, and he came looking for me.”

Zeeko gaped at him, thunderstruck. “Why isn't he here? If he knows, why isn't he here waiting for you?”

“I don't know! We have to do the X-ray
now
, Zeeko. If they took Papaw, that's the only leverage we've got to get him back. Where's the pod?” Not waiting for an answer, Benji moved past Zeeko. He'd mentally compared the interior of the X-ray mobile to an ambulance before, but that was wrong. The vehicle was more like an armored car, mixed with a mad scientist's lab. It was divided into two sections: X-ray chamber and general med center in back, and driver's section in front, separated by a silver wall.

Benji walked past something that looked like a phone booth. He glanced inside for the pod, but saw only a computer and monitor. It was the radiation-proof station for the X-ray operator.

“The agent?” Zeeko said, still stunned.

“Yes, the agen—
ow!
” He'd hit his head on some kind of machine that hung from above, situated on a circular track in the ceiling. It looked like a bone-white mechanical arm pointing toward the chamber floor. At the end of the arm was an orb, like a great blinkless eye. This was what generated the X-rays, Benji realized. He finally spotted his magic trunk sitting in shadows in a back corner.

“The agent!” Zeeko repeated. His tone, now not stunned but frightened, made Benji look back.

Zeeko was staring out the porthole window in the door . . . and suddenly, brilliant white light, far brighter than any firework, blazed through the porthole, dazzling all the surfaces in the chamber.

A black SUV had come around the corner at the end of the street. The vehicle was identical to those of the Newporte crew, but of course it wasn't them. It was McKedrick, the man in black, and now, at long last, Benji really was going to be vanished.

The SUV barreled toward the X-ray mobile, its high beams ignited like the eyes of a fairy-tale monster.

Benji threw the lid of his magic trunk open. The pod glimmered inside. He reached under it, searching. “Where's the gun?”

“What?”

“The ray gun, Zeeko!”

“Y-you have it, don't you?”

No.

The SUV peeled to a stop fifteen feet away.

Agent McKedrick, black jacket whipping in the wind, stepped out into the night. He had the fire-eyed look of a man in focused pursuit of his prey.

“
Kid!
”

“Holy shit,” Zeeko breathed.

“Lightman, I'm going to need you to exit your vehicle right now,” McKedrick said with terrible calmness barely disguising fury. “I'm going to need you to do it with your hands up.”

Almost without Benji realizing, McKedrick was within one step of the X-ray mobile. The agent reached for the door.

Benji grabbed the inside door handle in the same moment McKedrick grabbed the one outside. McKedrick was strong, almost impossibly strong, and the door came open an inch, two, three. Benji hauled back, arching his back and throwing all his weight into the effort. He managed to shut it again. “
Zeeko, lock it!
” he cried, and Zeeko did.

Through the window, Benji's and McKedrick's eyes met, inches apart, separated only by the pane.

“No more games, kid!” McKedrick shouted. “I've been to the quarry! I know something happened there, and I've got a pretty damn strong intuition you and your friends had something to do with it!”

“Where's my grandpa?”

McKedrick didn't seem to hear, or maybe care. “There are men in my business who will do terrible things to you. You and everyone you love. They can be here within the hour. You are in over your head, kid. You are not playing with fire; you're screwing with an atomic bomb. Now, come out. Be a man and come out and let me see what you're hiding. You have no idea what can happen to you if you don't.”

“Bullshit! You already hurt Papaw!”

McKedrick again refused to acknowledge what Benji had said. He only stared at Benji with that awful but eroding calm. He glanced around the streets, as if scanning to confirm they were truly alone. Then he looked back at Benji.

“Your call, kid.”

McKedrick stepped back, reached into his jacket, and pulled out a handgun fitted with a long silencer.

Screaming, Benji and Zeeko fell backward onto the floor. A bullet slammed into the outside of the door, punching a dimple into the heavy, radiation-proof metal, which had barely stopped the bullet.

The silenced pistol chirped again, and the door handle was blown out of the door. Malformed by the bullet, the twisted metal flew toward them.

Zeeko screamed and grabbed his bicep. Blood spurted between his fingers.

“Are you okay?!” Benji said.

“I'm SHOT! I am sort of SHOT!”

“You want to live, kid?” the agent said. He tried to open the
door; a piece of the shattered handle was stuck in the jamb, and the door wouldn't budge. “Get out!”

“Can—can you still work the X-ray, Zeeko?”

Zeeko went, “
Whaaaat?
”

A bullet flew through the porthole window. The glass crashed inward as the bullet embedded itself in the ceiling, missing the precious X-ray generator by inches. McKedrick's arm reached through the window, searching for the inner doorknob.

Benji shoved Zeeko into the X-ray's operating booth and ran frantically for the door that separated the driver's seat from the X-ray chamber.

“What are you doing?” Zeeko cried from the booth.

Benji threw open the door. The keys were in the ignition. “Hold on to something, Zeeko!”

He turned the keys, gunning the vehicle to life. If they X-rayed the pod and put the picture online, they would have leverage. If they didn't, McKedrick could vanish them without worry.

Papaw
, Benji thought. He threw the X-ray mobile into drive and rocketed away.

Correction:
tried
to rocket away.

The vehicle lurched forward maybe two whole feet. Benji pushed the pedal all the way to the floor. The steering wheel rattled, the engine whinnied, and the vehicle began moving at the pace of an impressive riding lawnmower. Panicked, Benji looked in the side-view mirror. He saw a stunned McKedrick fall off the back of the X-ray mobile and begin to chase on foot.

Zeeko appeared behind Benji. “The parking brake!” he said. He looked like he was wearing a sleeve of blood. With his uninjured arm, he yanked the emergency brake lever beside the wheel.

The vehicle's speed immediately doubled, sending Zeeko spilling and screaming into the X-ray chamber.

Benji heaved the wheel hard left like a mad sea captain; the vehicle tilted as it fishtailed, doing a one-eighty so that it was now aimed toward the exit of Benji's dead-end street.

The X-ray mobile zoomed past McKedrick's SUV just as the agent gave up the foot chase and ran back to his own car.

“Zeeko!”

“What!”

“Turn on the machine and X-ray the pod!”

“I'M SHO—”

“I know you're shot—
hold on
!”

Their vehicle reached the end of the road. Benji had to make a choice of which way to go, and he did so at random, swerving right, once again making the vehicle tilt dangerously close to tipping.

“I KNOW YOU'RE SHOT,” Benji continued, “BUT IF YOU DON'T TAKE THAT PICTURE AND PUT IT ONLINE, WE WILL BE
DEAD
!”

“OKAY, OKAY, GOOD POINT, I'M DOING IT!”

Benji took another left, another right. The streets were empty except for the snow, a ghost town haunted only by the man in black. Benji could hear Zeeko struggling to get the trunk and pod positioned beneath the X-ray device. Benji took a narrow one-way street, hoping against hope he had somehow thrown McKedrick's tail.

But no. After perhaps a minute of the chase, he saw the SUV turn a corner only a few seconds behind them.

“Benji, the X-ray isn't working!”

Benji's stomach plummeted. “Did it get shot?”

“No, but the trunk is sliding all over the place! We have to stop the car somewhere!”

How? How was he supposed to do that?
We stop, we're dead.

“What do I do?” Benji said. He looked back, staring at the magic trunk that pinballed back and forth with every movement. “What am I supposed to do?” he said to the pod. “You have to help me, what am I supposed to
do
?”

The pod didn't answer.

But the heavens did.

The night sky to the east boomed with a sudden great light. Blue sparks descended like a constellation caught and cascading on the same wind that likewise carried the brassy-sassy sounds of the Bedford Falls High School Marching Band.

Maybe half a mile away, Benji could see the fire department parking lot, where all the parade floats waited until it was their turn to join the parade.

A plan flashed in his mind.

We can stop the car if we do it in front of other people. That's the only way it will be safe.

Benji made a hairpin turn, directing the X-ray vehicle toward the fireworks. So it turned out they weren't going to miss the parade, after all.

T
he Bedford Falls Fire Department was an enormous, bright-red building, one of the last beneficiaries of the town's brief economic boom. The road Benji sped down fed directly into the building's parking lot, which was full of performers waiting to join the parade. Benji tapped his horn, driving very slowly through the lot, avoiding a convertible carrying last year's Homecoming Queen, a gymnastics troupe of little kids, and a dozen old men who wore fezzes and drove tiny go-karts (they honked indignantly back at Benji, their horns going “ah-
roooo
-gah!”).

Zeeko appeared over his shoulder, wrapping his bleeding bicep with gauze. “God Almighty, buddy, tell me this is part of a plan.”

Benji tilted his hand one way and then the other:
Kind of.

In front of him was a queue of cars waiting to turn onto Main Street. The crowd on the sidewalks wasn't as big as it might have been, which made sense. This was the end of the parade, and the football team had already passed.

“Get ready,” Benji told Zeeko, steering around the queue and cutting in front of a woman in an ice-cream truck. The X-ray
mobile was nearly into the street.

Benji slammed the brakes when someone in black stepped in front of the vehicle, waving their arms over their head. “Whoa whoa whoa,” said the same freshman who had directed him onto the stage at the assembly.

Benji cranked down his window. “Hi! Move!”

“Benji? What the—what are you doing?”

“I'm driving the community health truck.”

“O
kay
?”

“It's in the parade.”

“How
come
?”

“Because healthy living is magical! C'mon, move, we're next up, man!”

The confused freshman consulted his clipboard. “The truck isn't on the list. It says you were supposed to be on the football float?”

No more than fifty feet back, Benji could hear McKedrick's SUV scream to a stop. There was another chorus of
ah-
rooo-
gah
s.

Benji said quickly, “Right, they didn't want me to be on the team's float because I was stupid at the assembly today.”

And this, at last, convinced the freshman, who gave a thumbs-up and waved Benji through.

He steered onto Main Street. The crowd cheered and waved hand-painted signs featuring the names and numbers of players. Ahead of the X-ray mobile, the mayor (who Benji recognized only because he was wearing a sash that read
MAYOR
) rode in a slow-moving blue convertible. The crowd applauded the mayor raucously—not because they were huge mayoral fans, but because he was throwing candy.

Benji noticed some people in the crowd gawping at his own vehicle. Feeling absurd, he grinned and waved.

There was a commotion behind him.

He leaned out the window, looked back, and what he saw made his stomach fall. He had hoped that McKedrick would stop the pursuit, at least for the length of the parade. Instead, the agent had abandoned his car and was weaving through the people on the sidewalk fifty feet back, barking into a cell phone, his eyes on the X-ray mobile.

“What do I do?” Benji said once more, although he held no real hope that Mr. Fahrenheit would speak. No answer.

“Zeeko, are you ready?”

“When you are.”

“How long does it take to do the X-ray?”

“About a minute, give or take a few seconds.”

Benji put the vehicle into park. At once, the X-ray machine hummed to life. McKedrick burst through the crowd now, no more than thirty steps back. Benji didn't think McKedrick would hurt him or even arrest him in front of so many witnesses. But Benji had to hold him off until the X-ray was done.

McKedrick has a gun, probably even some other weapons. And I've got nothing.

Except . . . he realized that wasn't true.

He had his tuxedo. He carried magic in his pockets in the same way a gunslinger hauls his iron firepower.

Magic's comprised of the same material that falls out of a bull's ass
, said a voice in his head.

Maybe it is
, Benji said back.
But maybe it will be enough.

He grabbed his FireFinger gloves from his pockets, put them on. He reached up his sleeve and grasped the small but powerful magnet pinned to the fabric in there. He tugged the magnet, which was attached to a retractable string that ran up the sleeve to his armpit, and brought it out of his sleeve so he could hold it in his palm. With his free hand, he pulled from his inside pocket a three-inch silver cylinder: his collapsible magic staff.

His arsenal wasn't exactly a ray gun. But what other option did he have?

Benji opened the door.

The crowd greeted him with muted applause. He looked ragged, his top hat gone, his pant legs still wet from the jukebox water.

His mind was rocketing, searching the catalog of every performance he'd ever done, trying to find something useful. But this was not a freaking talent show.

This was a surreal standoff. Even McKedrick's
fashion sense
looked out of place. His expensive suit. His slicked-back hair. This impeccable big-city monster strode down a potholed road past country and small-town people in old winter coats. . . .

And inspiration struck Benji like a bolt.

“Hello there, ‘Mr. Fancypants Newporte Indianapolis'!” Benji shouted in his most theatrical voice. “How generous of you to visit our humble little hometown! Do you know what we're going to do to your team tonight?”

McKedrick paused, two steps away:
What the hell you talking about, kid?

Blinking to protect his vision, Benji snapped his fingers: light blast. McKedrick flinched, momentarily blinded; the crowd laughed and cheered this strange but apparently planned “fight” between their team mascot and the avatar of the big-city population that had always looked down on them.

Benji hurled a fistful of smoke pellets to the concrete, raising a thick cocoon that enveloped both him and the agent and obscured them from the crowd. Sightless though McKedrick was, his reflexes were terrifyingly attuned: As Benji lunged forward to clear the final distance between them, the agent was already reaching into his own jacket, reaching for the pistol in a holster beneath his armpit.

By a millisecond, Benji was quicker. He grabbed McKedrick's pistol with his magnet-bearing hand, felt the magnet take hold of the gun. The magnet and the gun zipped up his sleeve, cracking against his elbow but at least disarming the agent.

Now wind whipped the last of the smoke away, revealing them again to the crowd. McKedrick blinked twice, opened his eyes fully, and heedless of the crowd, he grabbed Benji by his tuxedo, pulling him closer, his hot, tobacco-rich breath like an invasion.

“Where is my Papaw?” Benji said, soft but furious.

“I don't care,” McKedrick spat. “Damn you, listen to me—”

Benji opened his magic-staff-bearing hand in front of McKedrick's stomach. The silver collapsible staff expanded, hitting McKedrick in the gut, knocking the wind out of him and sending him to his knees. “
That's
what we're gonna do!” Benji announced to the crowd.

“Benji?” said a familiar voice.

He whipped around. Across the street was a raised wooden platform with television cameras broadcasting the parade on local TV. Ellie stood up behind one of the control panels, looking shocked by what she had seen.

Benji froze, unsure for so many reasons what he should say. McKedrick groaned, trying to stand.

“
It's done!
” Zeeko shouted from the X-ray mobile.

Benji dashed back into the vehicle. He spotted an alleyway between two buildings on the right side of the parade route. Luckily, police sawhorses were set up on the sidewalk there, so the entrance was clear. With a thousand confused stares trailing his vehicle, he steered toward the alley.

Once inside, he sped up as much as he could, taking turns through a series of alleys, trying to put distance between himself and McKedrick. Zeeko opened the lead door between the
X-ray compartment and the driver's seat. “We did it, my friend,” he said. “Thank God.”

“What does it . . . what does Mr. Fahrenheit look like?”

“The X-ray's still processing.”

“Are you okay?” Benji said, nodding to Zeeko's arm.

“Define ‘okay,'” Zeeko said, but laughed weakly. “The bleeding stopped. I love you and CR, but y'all need to stop beating me up.” There was an electronic
beep
behind them. “Popcorn's done.”

As Zeeko returned to the rear compartment, Benji turned into an alley a couple hundred feet long. By now, all the sounds of the parade were muted by distance. He steered around a Dumpster, almost to the end of the alley. . . .

“Benji,” Zeeko said, “something's wrong.” In the rearview mirror, Benji could see Zeeko standing beside the magic trunk, staring at the pod with an expression of confusion and unaccountable fear. Zeeko looked up and said, “The pod is e—
Benji, look out!
”

Benji's gaze whipped forward just in time to see a car screaming to a stop at the end of the alley a few feet ahead, cutting off the only exit. He slammed the brakes and instinctively heaved the wheel to avoid collision; the X-ray mobile slammed into the alley wall with a shriek of metal and sparks. Benji pitched forward, seatbelt-less, the steering wheel punching him over his heart, and for a moment his vision grayed out. And so that was why he didn't put up a fight when a shadowed figure opened his door, grabbed him by the jacket, and pulled him into the night.