Alcatraz (3 page)

Grandpa Smedry froze.

Maybe I shouldn’t play with the old man
, I thought, feeling guilty.
He may be a loon, but that’s no reason to make fun of him
.

‘Breaking things?’
Grandpa Smedry said, sounding awed.
‘So it’s true.
Why, such a Talent hasn’t been seen in centuries .
.
.’

‘Look,’ I said, raising my hands.
‘I was just joking around.
I didn’t mean—’

‘I knew it!’
Grandpa Smedry said eagerly.
‘Yes, yes, this improves our chances!
Come, lad, we have to get moving.’
He turned and left the room again, carrying his briefcase and rushing eagerly down the stairs.

‘Wait!’
I cried, chasing after the old man.
However, when I reached the doorway, I paused.

There was a car parked on the curb outside.
An old car.
Now, when you read the words
old car
, you likely think of a beat-up or rusted vehicle that barely runs.
A car that is old, kind of in the same way that cassette tapes are old.

This was not such a car.
It was not old like cassette tapes are old – it wasn’t even old like records are old.
No, this car was old like Beethoven is old.
Or, at least, so it seemed.
To me – and, likely, to most of you living in the Hushlands – the car looked like an antique.
Kind of like a Model-T.

But that was just my assumption.

The point is that many times, the first thing a person presumes about something – or someone – is inaccurate.
Or, at the very least, incomplete.
Take the young Alcatraz Smedry, for instance.
After reading my story up to this point, you have probably made some assumptions.
Perhaps you’re – despite my best efforts – feeling a bit of sympathy for me.
After all, orphans usually make very sympathetic heroes.

Perhaps you think that my habit of using sarcasm is simply a method of hiding my insecurity.
Perhaps you’ve decided that I wasn’t a cruel boy, just a very confused one.
Perhaps you’ve decided, despite my feigned indifference, I didn’t
like
breaking things.

Obviously, you are a person of very poor judgment.
I would ask you to kindly refrain from drawing conclusions that I don’t explicitly tell you to make.
That’s a very bad habit, and it makes authors grumpy.

I was none of those things.
I was simply a mean boy who didn’t really care whether or not he burned down kitchens.
And that mean boy was the one who stood on the doorstep, watching Grandpa Smedry waving eagerly for him to follow.

Now,
perhaps
I’ll admit that I felt just a little bit of longing.
A .
.
.
wishfulness, you might say.
Getting a package that claimed to be from my parents had made me remember days long ago – before I realized how foolish I was being – when I had yearned to know my real parents.
Days when I had longed to find someone who
had
to love me, if only because they were related to me.

Fortunately, I had outgrown those feelings.
My moment of weakness passed quickly, and I slammed the door closed and locked the old man outside.
Then I went to the kitchen to get some breakfast.

That, however, is when someone drew a gun on me.

3

I
’d like to take this opportunity to point out something important.
Should a strange old man of questionable sanity show up at your door – suggesting that he is your grandfather and that you should accompany him upon some quest of mystical import – you should flatly refuse him.

Don’t take his candy either.

Unfortunately, as you will soon see, I was quickly forced to break this rule.
Please don’t hold it against me.
It was done under duress.
I’m really not used to being shot at.

I walked tiredly into the kitchen – which still smelled of smoke – hoping that the strange old man wouldn’t take to pounding on the door.
I didn’t really want to call the police on him – not only would I likely break the telephone in the process (I’m particularly bad with phones) but I really didn’t want the old loon carted away in a police car.
That would have been—

‘Alcatraz Smedry?’
a voice suddenly asked.

I jumped, turning from the half-burned cupboard, a box of cornflakes in my hand.
A man stood in the doorway behind me, wearing slacks and a button-down shirt.
I frowned, realizing that I recognized the symbol on the man’s shirt pocket and standard-issue attaché case.
He was a foster care caseworker –
this
was the man that Ms.
Fletcher had sent to pick me up from the house.
I realized that when I’d originally gone chasing the old man up to my room, I’d left the front door open.
The caseworker must have come in looking for me while I was upstairs chatting with the lunatic.

‘Hi,’ I said, putting down the box.
‘I’ll be ready in a bit – let me have breakfast first.’

‘You’re him, then?’
the caseworker asked, adjusting his horn-rimmed glasses.
‘The Smedry kid?’

I nodded.

‘Good,’ the man said, then pulled a gun out of his attaché case and raised it toward me.
It had a silencer on the barrel.

I froze, shocked.
(And don’t try to claim that you did anything different the first time a government bureaucrat pulled a gun on you.)

Fortunately, I eventually found my tongue.
‘Wait!’
I said, raising my hands.
‘What are you doing?’

‘Thanks for the sands, kid,’ the man said, and moved as if to pull the trigger.

At that moment something massive crashed through the wall of my house – something that looked a lot like the front end of an old Model-T Ford.
I cried out, dodging to the side, and the caseworker stumbled to the ground in the chaos.

The man who called himself Grandpa Smedry sat happily in the driver’s seat.
A chunk of smoke-damaged ceiling fell down onto the hood of the car, throwing up a puff of white dust.
The old man poked his head out the window.

‘Lad,’ he said, ‘might I point out that you have two choices right now?
You can get in the car with me, or you can stay here with the man holding a gun.’

I stood, dazed.

‘You really don’t have much time to decide,’ Grandpa Smedry said, leaning toward me, speaking in a kind of half whisper, as if he were sharing some kind of great secret.

Now, I’d like to pause here and note that Grandpa Smedry was lying to me.
I didn’t have only two choices at that point – I had quite a few more than that.
True, I could have chosen to stay in the room and get shot.
I also could have chosen to get in the car.
However, there were lots of other things I could have done.
For instance, I could have run around the house flapping my arms and pretending that I was a penguin.
The logical choice to make in this situation would have been to call the police on both of those maniacs.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think of penguins or police and instead did as Grandpa Smedry said, scrambling over and getting into the car.

As I stated at the beginning of the chapter, I really shouldn’t have done this.
I was soon to learn the dangers involved in following strange old men on quests.
I don’t want to give away any more of the story, but let me say that my fate at this point took a sharp turn toward altars, sacrifices, and evil Librarians.

And possibly some sharks.

The car backed out of the house, the tires leaving tracks in the lawn.
I sat in the front passenger seat, still stunned, looking at the wreckage of the Sheldons’ house.
Bits of siding were falling off the outside wall, crushing Roy’s prize tulips.
This was more damage than I’d ever done to any foster home.
This time it wasn’t directly my fault, but .
.
.
well, that didn’t change the fact that the kitchen was no longer just burned but also had quite a large hole in it.

We turned onto the street in front of the house – the car puttering along at a modest speed.
The caseworker didn’t chase after us, but that didn’t stop me from watching anxiously until the house disappeared in the distance.

Someone just tried to kill me
, I thought, feeling numb.
You may find it hard to believe – considering the number of things I’d broken in my life – but this was the first time someone had actually tried to shoot me.
It was an unsettling feeling.
A little like the way you feel when you have the flu, actually.

Maybe there’s a connection.

‘Well, that was exciting!’
Grandpa Smedry said.

I was still staring out the window.
The street passed outside, a suburban neighborhood distinctive only in that it looked pretty much like every other one in the nation.
Calm two-story houses.
Green lawns.
Oak trees, shrubs, flower beds, all carefully maintained.

‘He tried to kill me,’ I whispered.

Grandpa Smedry snorted.
‘Not very well.
You’ll understand eventually, lad, but pulling a gun on a Smedry isn’t exactly the smartest thing a man can do.
But that’s behind us.
Now we have to decide what to do next.’

‘Next?’

‘Of course.
We can’t just let them have those sands!’
Grandpa Smedry raised a hand and pointed at me.
‘Don’t you understand, lad?
It’s not just your life that’s in danger here.
This is the fate of an entire
world
we’re juggling!
The Free Kingdoms are already losing their war against the Librarians.
With a tool like the Sands of Rashid, the Librarians will have just the edge they need to win.
If we don’t get the sands back before they’re smelted – which will only take a few hours – it could lead to the overthrow of the Free Kingdoms themselves!
We are civilization’s only hope.’

‘I .
.
.
see,’ I said.

‘I don’t think you do, lad.
The Lenses smelted from that sand will contain the most powerful Oculatory Distortions either land has ever seen.
Gathering those sands was your father’s life’s work.
I can’t believe you let the Librarians steal them.
I’ll be honest, lad – I had higher hopes for you.
I really expected better.
If only I hadn’t come so late .
.
.’

I sat quietly, looking out the windshield.
Now, it’s time you understood something about me.
Despite what the stories like to say about my honor and my foresight, the truth is that I possess neither trait in large amounts.
One trait I’ve
always
possessed, however, is rashness.
Some call it irresponsibility; others call it spontaneity.
Either way, I could rightly be called a somewhat reckless boy, not always prone to carefully considering the consequences of my actions.

In this case, of course, there was something more behind the decision I made.
I had seen some very odd things that day.
It occurred to me that if something as crazy as a gunman showing up in my house could happen, perhaps it could be true that this old man was my grandfather.

Someone had tried to kill me.
My house was in a shambles.
I was sitting in a hundred-year-old car with a madman.
What the heck
, I thought.
This might be fun
.

I turned, focusing on the man who claimed to be my grandfather.
‘I .
.
.
didn’t
let
them steal the sand,’ I found myself saying.

Grandpa Smedry turned to me.

‘Or, well, I
did
,’ I said, ‘but I let them take the sand on purpose, of course.
I wanted to follow them and see what they tried to do with it.
After all, how else are we going to uncover their dastardly schemes?’

Grandpa Smedry paused, then he smiled.
His eyes twinkled knowingly, and I saw for the first time a hint of wisdom in the old man.
Grandpa Smedry didn’t seem to believe what I had said, but he reached over anyway, clapping me on the arm.
‘Now
that’s
talking like a Smedry!’

‘Now,’ I said, holding up a finger.
‘I want to make something very clear.
I do not believe a word of what you have told me up to this point.’

‘Understood,’ Grandpa Smedry said.

‘I’m only going with you because someone just tried to kill me.
You see, I am a somewhat reckless boy and am not always prone to carefully considering the consequences of my actions.’

‘A Smedry trait for certain,’ Grandpa Smedry noted.

‘In fact,’ I said, ‘I think that you are a loon and likely not even my grandfather at all.’

‘Very well, then,’ Grandpa Smedry said, smiling.

I paused as the old car turned a corner, moving with a very smooth speed.
We were leaving the neighborhood behind, turning onto a commercial street.
We began to pass convenience stores, service stations, and the occasional fast-food restaurant.

It was at that point that I realized Grandpa Smedry had taken his hands off the wheel sometime during the conversation, and now sat with his hands in his lap, smiling happily.
I jumped in surprise.

‘Grandpa!’
I yelped.
‘The steering wheel!’

‘Drastic Drakes!’
Grandpa Smedry exclaimed.
‘I nearly forgot!’
He grabbed the steering wheel as the car turned another corner.
Grandpa Smedry proceeded to turn the wheel back and forth, seeming in random directions, as a child might play with a toy steering wheel.
The car didn’t respond to his motions but moved smoothly along the street, picking up speed.

‘Good eye, lad!’
Grandpa Smedry said.
‘We always have to keep up appearances, eh?’

‘Um .
.
.
yes,’ I said.
‘Is the car driving itself, then?’

‘Of course.
What good would it be if it didn’t?
Why, you’d have to concentrate so much that it wouldn’t be worth the effort.
Might as well walk, I say!’

Right
, I thought.

Those of you from the Free Kingdoms might be familiar with silimatic engines and can – perhaps – determine how they could be used to mimic a car.
Of course, if you’re from the Free Kingdoms, you probably have only a vague idea what a car is in the first place, since you’re used to much larger vehicles.
(It’s kind of a like a silimatic crawler with wheels instead of legs, though people treat them more like horses.
Only, unlike horses, they aren’t alive – and when they poop, environmentalists get mad.)

‘So,’ I asked, ‘where are we going?’

‘There’s only one place the Librarians would have taken an artifact as powerful as the Sands of Rashid,’ Grand Smedry said.
‘Their local base of operations.’

‘That would be .
.
.
the library’

‘Where else?
The downtown library, to be exact.
We’ll have to be very careful infiltrating that place.’

I cocked my head.
‘I’ve been there before.
Last I checked, it wasn’t too hard to get in.’

‘We don’t have to just get in,’ Grand Smedry said.
‘We have to
infiltrate
.’

‘And the difference is .
.
.?’

‘One requires far more sneaking.’
Grandpa Smedry seemed quite delighted by the prospect.