The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (14 page)

“Turn right.”

I pulled out of the parking lot and turned right, away from the on-ramp.

“Where am I going?” I asked.

“Where do you think?” the guy behind me cracked. I guessed he was saying I was going to my grave or to hell, probably to hell for all the people dead because of me.

Bennacio said, “Think carefully about what you are doing. I do not wish to kill you.”

“Shut up,” the man sitting behind him said.

“There is still time,” Bennacio said. “If you repent now, heaven may still receive you.”

The guy holding the dagger to my throat laughed.

“Whatever Mogart has offered you—is it worth the price of your immortal soul?” Bennacio asked calmly. He might have been talking about the weather.

The guy behind me said something to his buddy. It sounded like French. His buddy grunted and said,
“Repos!”

“Think of your wives, your children,” Bennacio said. “Would you have them widowed, fatherless? If you do not value your own lives, can you not consider theirs?”

“Speak again and the fat kid dies,” the guy behind me said. I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw his hand was shaking slightly. Bennacio was getting to him. I thought about what Mogart told me, about the will of most men being weak. I also was thinking that just because a guy has an oversized head and a big body, you shouldn't call him fat.

We drove a few miles until we passed a sign that said “George Washington National Forest.” I was directed onto this access road marked “Rangers Only” that narrowed to a skinny one-lane, winding deep into the woods.

“Here,” the guy with the dagger to my throat said. “Stop here.”

“I will kill you both,” Bennacio said, still in that weird, calm voice. “First you with the knife. I will turn your own hand upon your throat and use it to sever your head from your body.” He nodded to the guy behind him. “Then you I shall gut as a hog in a slaughterhouse, and I shall spread your steaming entrails on the ground for the carrion to feast upon.”

This guy said something to the guy behind me. I don't know what he said, but it sounded pretty urgent.
“Fou!”
the guy with the dagger hissed back.

“You guys oughtta listen to Bennacio,” I said. “He's a knight and those guys never lie.”

“Get out,” the guy with the dagger said.

“Ave Maria, gratia plena . . .”
Bennacio began to pray. The guy behind him got out of the car, opened Bennacio's door, and yanked him out.

“Get out,” the man behind me said. I got out. They dragged us into the trees.
Dominus tecum. Bendicta tu in
milieribus
. . . . The ground was carpeted with pine needles and dead leaves, and there was a mist in the air and no sound, not even a bird singing. I looked over to Bennacio, now on his knees, with his arms hanging loosely at his sides.
Et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.
His eyes were half closed. The man standing before the kneeling Bennacio was heavy and broad-shouldered, with short-cropped black hair and a jutting brow. My guy was slighter and shorter, though I probably had at least ten pounds on him. He had shaggy blond hair and an ugly scar running from beneath his right eye, down his cheek, to his jawline.

I got a good look at the dagger too. It was about two feet long, black, double-bladed, with the image of a dragon's head carved into its hilt. It looked like a miniature version of the swords Bennacio and the other knights used in Samson Towers. All these guys must go the same outfitters.

Santa Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus,
nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae.

“I want to pray too,” I said. I don't know why I said that, but Bennacio was praying and he seemed like the kind of guy who always did just the right thing in a crisis. I went to my knees, bowed my head, and started the Hail Mary, only in English, but when I got to the “pray for us sinners” part I stopped because I heard a scream and a loud snap like the sound of a branch breaking. That's it, I thought. Bennacio's bought it.

Then I looked to my right and saw Bennacio coming in a blur for the guy in front of me. The man raised his dagger.

He was moving in slow motion, though. Bennacio wasn't.

Bennacio grabbed his wrist and I heard another snapping sound, not quite as loud as the first, and with his other hand Bennacio grabbed the guy by his shaggy hair while he forced the dagger back toward his throat. I didn't want to see what was going to happen next, so I stood up and kind of stumbled through the trees and undergrowth, passing the bigger man, who lay twisting on the ground. I heard a soft thud behind me and I knew without looking that Bennacio had kept the first part of the promise he made in the car. Then I heard the pleading tone in the bigger man's voice as Bennacio walked back to him, and I knew he was going to keep the second part too.

I went behind a tree and threw up. I was still bent over when I heard Bennacio call softly behind me.

“Kropp! Alfred! Come!”

Don't look; don't look, just keep your head up and your
eyes on Bennacio,
I told myself as I walked back to the car. He was already sitting in the passenger seat. He had taken the Big Mac apart and was eating the patty, holding it in the palm of his large hand, using a napkin as a plate, cutting the meat with the side of his plastic fork.
Don't look, don't look,
I told myself, but I had to look because I didn't want to trip on any body parts on the way to the car. So I looked and saw Bennacio had kept both his promises.

18

I drove toward the interstate. Bennacio told me to turn into the McDonald's parking lot. At first I
thought he wanted to wash up, but I couldn't see any blood
on his clothes, not a speck anywhere. He had me cruise
around the building once, then pull onto the road again and
turn left into the parking lot of the gas station on the interstate
side of the McDonald's.

“There it is. Stop, Kropp.”

I pulled beside a car parked behind the station. Bennacio
dabbed both corners of his mouth with a napkin and got out
while I sat there and watched him through his open door. He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and pressed the remote
button, unlocking the other car. I got out then and joined him.

“Hey,” I said. “This is a Ferrari Enzo.”

Bennacio didn't answer. He was searching the car. He checked the center console, over the visors, under the seats and floor mats. He opened the glove box and pulled out a sleek black cell phone.

I said, “You know, it's funny. Somebody once promised I would have one of these cars.” All of a sudden I felt like crying.

“Park the car, Kropp,” he said, with a little jerk of his head toward the Mercedes. “Over there.” He pointed to the far corner of the lot. I parked, walked back to the Ferrari, and when I got there, Bennacio was going through the trunk. He threw the keys to the Ferrari at me.

“What, we're taking this?” I asked.

“Hurry, Kropp,” he said. “They know where we are now and where we're going. There will be more.”

I slid into the driver's seat of the Ferrari and said to Bennacio, “You knights sure like to travel in style.”

Bennacio said, “Drive, Kropp.”

I got back on the highway and the Ferrari sped up to seventy-five like it was cruising a neighborhood street. Bennacio told me to go faster. At ninety he told me to go faster again. At 110 I told him I wasn't going any faster because if I drove any faster, my stomach would come out of my mouth. He didn't say anything after that.

I wished I could put the top down. I had always wanted a convertible and to take it onto the open road like in a commercial and go a hundred miles an hour with the top down.

After an hour, the black cell phone rang. Bennacio flipped it open, listened for a second, then said, “It is too late. They are dead.” He snapped it closed and tossed it out the window.

He leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes, and said, “I must rest now. Wake me when you are tired and I will drive.”

“I don't get it,” I said. I was pretty upset. There had been more blood flying around than in a horror movie. I had somehow found myself in an R-rated movie when all I wanted was PG-13. “There's a whole lot I don't get, Bennacio, like why we're driving in a hot car to Nova Scotia; why people are trying to kill us; what the heck OIPEP is and how it fits into all this; how Mogart or anybody else could use a sword no matter how powerful to take over the whole world; and why any of this had to happen to me in the first place. But what I
really
don't get is why you had to slaughter those guys like that.”

“They would have slaughtered us.”

“But how's that make you any different from them?”

“They are servants of the enemy—”

“So?”

“—thralls of the Dragon. Would you have them live to pursue us to our end?”

“I just don't get it, that's all. Chopping off people's heads and cutting out their guts . . .”

“You would not pity them if you knew them as I do.”

“I don't know anybody who deserves something like that.”

“You are afraid. I understand.” His eyes were still closed. He spoke kindly to me, like a father would, or how I imagined a father would, since I never knew my father.

“You may pull off and find the nearest bus terminal if you wish, Kropp. I will give you the money for a ticket. I am well enough now to drive the rest of the way.”

I thought about it. I thought about it hard. His offer was tempting, but really, where would I go? I didn't want to live with the Tuttles, and if I went back to Knoxville I wouldn't have a choice. Then all of a sudden I thought about that little beach town in Florida where Mom used to take me every summer. Maybe I could go there and get a job and live on the beach until the world ended. There were a lot worse places you could wait for the end of the world.

And, really, what did I think I was doing—me, Alfred Kropp of all people—driving a hundred miles an hour in a Ferrari Enzo with a modern-day knight by my side? Who the heck did I think I was?

“It was because of what Mogart did to Mr. Samson, wasn't it?” I asked finally. “The reason you mutilated those guys.”

“Samson was my captain, Kropp,” Bennacio said. “And there are some debts that cry to heaven to be repaid.”

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