After a great chaos, a great silence. In a ruined bus, on its side in a ditch just off the highway, the air was still, and the people equally so. Rain beat against metal, and for a moment, no one moved. Then, a baby’s cry split the air. Its mother lay in a heap on the floor next to it, her arms still around her child. At the head of the bus, the driver climbed up from the stairwell where he’d been thrown and took stock of the situation.

The bus had rolled several times, landing on its right side on the far embankment. The front door faced the ground, the windows opened to mud. Like the driver, the passengers had all been thrown from their seats, and they were now piled on top of one another, as if at the end of a particularly exhausting pillow fight.

The bus driver shook his head. There would be time to stare and wonder later. Right now, there were procedures to follow. Emergency exit, passenger side seat 20; emergency number, 911; company number, 555-0534. He began crawling over the seats, shaking people awake as he went. Miraculously, almost every one seemed to have survived. When he came to the baby and its mother, he spent a few extra moments trying to wake the woman, but without success.

“What the hell happened?” one passenger asked. He was in his mid-thirties, with dark hair and thick black spectacles. His tan suit was wrinkled and bloody.

“Did we slide off the road?” another asked. She wasn’t more than twenty-five, and had a huge gash across her forehead.

The bus driver just kept moving. He could see people coming down the slope from the highway, and motioned to them. Several of them helped him kick out the window, and the passengers began crawling up and out of the bus, into the waiting arms of those below. The baby was still crying, but no one seemed to want to have anything to do with it. They all gingerly stepped over the child and its mother, climbing to safety without so much as a word about it.

The bus was not yet empty when the first medics arrived. They grabbed their equipment and their stretcher and slid down the embankment towards those passengers who couldn’t make it up to them. A fire truck arrived not long after that to assist in removing the remaining passengers. As the last one leapt to the ground, the fire fighter asked her if there was anyone else inside. She only sobbed and shook her head. The fire fighter, with some assistance from a comrade, got himself up to the emergency exit and poked his head inside.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

“What we got?” the other fireman called up.

“Looks like a mom and kid.”

The bus driver stared openly at the fire fighter. They were standing right next to each other. The driver was practically in the fireman’s lap. What was going on?

“What about the driver?”

“Yeah, hold on.”

The fireman climbed into the bus and gingerly made his way to the front, the bus driver in tow. Just as the pair made it to the first pair of seats, they both stopped short. The fireman put his gloved hand to his mouth and looked away, but the driver himself was unable to move. In the bottom of the stairwell, his arm pinned between the door and the ground, was the body of the driver.

Memories of the crash flashed before the driver’s eyes like a strobe light. The slick pavement, the sharp turn, one two three quick flips. He was tossed against the door, where his arm had become trapped. As he desperately tired to pull it out, the bus and come down hard against the embankment, and there, suddenly, his memory stopped. Looking down at his own body, he could see why. A huge rock protruding from the ground had come up through the door and struck the back of his skull.

“He’s dead,” the fireman called out to his companion, heading back for the exit. “We’re going to need some forensics in here.” He jumped to the ground, and the two of them walked into the chaos of survivors and emergency personnel gathering on the highway. The bus driver, left alone with his own body, watched the activity long into the night, before heading off himself, in search of what was to come next.

Labels: fictions

I came into the king’s service on Sunday, February 11, after his guards informed me that I was no longer welcome at my own home. Although perhaps “informed” isn’t exactly the right word. His Highness, it seemed, had recognized my talents and wanted to offer me a position. Although perhaps “offer” isn’t exactly the right word here, either. It was kill for the king or be killed by the king, and so I opted for the less career-ending of the two.

Castle life wasn’t so bad, anyway, what with the sumptuous feasts and courtly ladies and the kindly serving woman in charge of my quarters. One of her first comments to me was about how much I resembled the king, and thereafter, she jokingly referred to me as her Little Prince.

My first target as a royal employee was His Highness’s younger brother, an act which, he assured me, averted a civil war. My next two jobs were also family members, but familial squabbles are nothing new for a royal household, and it wasn’t until my fourth assignment that my curiosity was piqued. I was to eliminate two brothers of whom His Highness seemed to want me to remain entirely ignorant. Their age, occupations, relationship to His Highness, I was left in the dark on every detail. Given the amount of information he had supplied in each of my three previous royal assignments, his silence on the matter was puzzling. Indeed, in the case of his brother’s wife, he had given me rather more information than I had desired to have. With the brothers, however, mum was the word, and so I decided that some research was in order before I brought their short lives to an end.

The sole piece of information His Highness had granted me was the address at which I might find the boys, and so it was to there that I made my way.

The house was located in a neighborhood wasn’t too far from the castle itself. Its clean streets and tree-lined curbs reminded me of my youth, of all the things I’d wanted so badly but never could have. The building in question had a wrap-around porch and was painted a subdued nearly-purple. The grounds seemed rather well kempt. It must have cost a king’s ransom to upkeep. I slunked into a quiet vantage point beneath a tree in the neighbor’s yard and watched.

As I watched, two boys came running through the front door and started down the street. They were young, but not children, perhaps in their late teens, and lean as only youth can be. They continued jostling each other, shoving and giggling as they made their way along the sidewalk. With one last glace at the house, I started out after them, trying to shake the sudden sense that I had seen them somewhere before.

They wound their way through the downtown markets, buying up anything that caught their fancy and arranging for delivery. They seemed on friendly terms with every merchant they visited, chatting it up and even exchanging kisses with some of them. Perhaps His Highness was trying to send a message to some wealthy detractors?

The aimless wandering continued for a good portion of the day, and I began to suspect that they had discovered me. I hadn’t gleaned much more than the fact that they must truly be rich beyond imagining, and was ready to give up for the day, when they took an unexpected turn and ended up at the main gate of one His Highness’s private residences.

I hung back by the road-side shrubs, where I had an epiphany. My eyebrows came together in consternation as I realized why they were chatting it up with the guard as if they were old friends, why they showed up at the king’s private residence as if they lived there, why they had so much money. I turned back and started back for the castle, but couldn’t seem to point my feet in the correct direction. It was nearly midnight before I ceased wandering and arrived at the front gates. I was grabbed before I could finish crossing the outer courtyard and hauled before His Highness, who was not exactly pleased to see me.

“What the hell’ve you been doing all day?” he asked, barely masking his wrath.

“Trying to find out why you’ve got me killing children,” I said.

“They’re not children.”

“They’re your children.”

His Highness’s eyes narrowed. When he spoke, his voice was nearly monotone. “I told you to kill them, not to find their life history.” I could feel the anger radiating off of him.

“You didn’t tell me not to.”

“I didn’t tell you anything!”

I cocked my head to one side. “Why not?”

His Highness paused to consider. “How did you find out they were mine?”

I shrugged. “They spend money like water, they visited your house on Cyning Street. They look just like you. Why?”

He sighed, sounding oddly relieved. “They may be young, but they’re not children,” he said. “I need you to take care of them, Renee.”

The pleading tone in his voice and his first recorded use of my given name shocked me into acquiescence, and I left with little more than I had come in with. I climbed into bed, still consumed with curiosity, and dreamt of my father, strong, kind, and dead before I was even born.

***

The next morning, I awoke feeling groggy and discontented with life. Dreams of one’s dead father and one’s suicidal mother will do that to one, I suppose, and the fact that I’ve always preferred never to have any emotions whatsoever doesn’t actually make such a state easier to achieve.

I took my time with breakfast, shopped for a new jacket, and spent lunch wondering what the hell was wrong with me. I was stalling, and it wasn’t like me. True, I’d never killed anyone under twenty-five, but I wasn’t attached enough to these boys to risk my own neck for them, and if I was, then things were even worse with me than I thought.

Making up my mind not to be bothered about it any longer, I made my way back to the previous day’s lookout post under the tree and waited. After an hour or so, an elderly woman with a cane hobbled her way down the lawn towards me. At first I assumed she was there to kick me off her property, and I readied my supply of cunning rebukes, but instead she just stood next to me, staring at the purple house the same as me.

At length, she said to me, “I saw you here yesterday. You shouldn’t be ashamed. They could use someone like you to guide them.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“They’re not bad boys,” she continued, apparently oblivious to my question. “It’s just that they never had to learn self-discipline. They’re clever and full of energy, they just can’t focus.”

“What are you talking about, old woman?”

Finally, she turned to me. “They could use a father figure,” she said. “An older brother, someone to look up to.”

“And this involves me how?”

The woman’s confidence faltered. “Aren’t you related?” she asked. “You look just like them.”

For a moment, all I could do was blink at her. “I what?”

“You’re not related to them?”

“No.”

The woman’s expression turned to one of anger. “Then what are you doing on my lawn? Get off!”

She raised her cane at me, and I decided to flee rather than cause an incident. As I made my escape, her words kept ringing in my head. “You look just like them.” She sounded just like my cleaning lady. If I looked just like the brothers, /and/ I looked just like His Highness…

I shook my head. What ridiculousness. Simply because I looked like three people who all happened to be related to one another did not mean that I was related to them. It was time to go home and get some sleep.

My own home had been under surveillance ever since His Highness “hired” me, and so I’d never bothered to go back, instead taking up residence in the castle. Now, however, I found the idea of returning to the castle unpalatable, and yearned for my own room and my own sheets. Not giving a damn who saw me or what they did about it, I headed straight home and crawled into bed, where I curled up into a ball and fell asleep.

***

I dreamt I was being compared to a series of less and less savory men in an attempt to discover which one of them I was related to. After each one was discovered to be a false match, there was a series of three loud thumps and I was led along to the next chump.

After one of them, the series of thumps was especially loud, and I thought for a moment that this meant we had found a match, but I opened my eyes to find that it was someone knocking on my bedroom door. “Mmn?” I mumbled, stumbling out of bed and getting to the door.

I don’t know who I expected to see on the other side of that door, but it was certainly not a disheveled royal page. The boy looked as though he’d been crying, and he was panting like he’d run here the whole way from the castle.

“Sir?” he said to me. “They need you at the castle right away, sir.”

I raised my eyebrow at him.

“The king, sir, he’s…” The boy hiccuped and started to tear up.

A knot began forming in my stomach. “He’s what?”

“They’ve killed him!”

***

I was off like a shot to the castle, running the whole way like the Devil himself was at my heels. I burst through the gate and found the entire place in chaos. People were skittering to and fro, bumping into one another and generally being disorderly.

Skipping that mess, I headed straight for the king’s chambers, where I ignored the guards’ warnings not to go in.

His Highness was laid out on a stretcher in the middle of the room, with two doctors cleaning up in one corner and some of his generals whispering to themselves in the other. I burst through the door and suddenly felt many pairs of eyes on me.

One of the generals detached himself from the pack and came over to me. “I’m sorry, boy. We called the doctors as fast as we could, but…” He trailed off, shrugging.

“Did anyone see them?” I asked.

He gave me a questioning glance.

“Did anyone see the perpetrators? Two little boys.”

His eyes widened and his head whipped around to stare openly at one of his peers. The object of his attention joined us. “What?” he asked.

“Where did you see them?” I asked before the first general could get a word in.

“The boys?” the second one asked. He looked relieved. “One of them was across the courtyard from me when the shoots went off. I had just turned the corner, I don’t think he saw me. It looked to me like he was signaling someone, and when I looked up, there was an older boy in the window across from His Highness’s chambers.”

“We sent some guards out to look for them,” the first general said, “but, frankly, we’re having a hard time imagining two teenagers assassinated the king.”

“They’re not children,” I said.

***

I headed for that nearly-purple house, where I found the two boys frolicking in the yard as if nothing were wrong. Instead of taking my previous post beneath the tree, I went right up to the old woman’s door and knocked.

She didn’t seem happy to see me. “You again? I told to get off my property!”

“Ma’am, I’m here to apologize,” I said. “You were absolutely correct. I had no right to loiter on your property, and I am very sorry to have disturbed you.” I gave a little bow and turned to go. It was a risk, but if I could pull it off, it would be worth it.

My gamble paid off, and she put her hand on my arm before I had even managed to turn all the way around.

“Wait just a minute,” she said. “It’s so rare to see a polite young man these days. Please, won’t you come in?”

I followed her in, and she seated me in one of her comfortable dining room chairs and continued into the kitchen. “I’ve got some cookies if you’d like one,” she offered.

“That would be wonderful, thank you,” I said, and after a minute, “That’s a nice large window you have. You must know just about everything that goes on across the street.”

“Indeed I do,” she said, coming back with a tray of milk and cookies. “I try to keep to myself, but as you said, it’s a nice large window.” She winked at me and we shared a smile.

We sat there in silence, enjoying the cookies, which really were delicious, and watching the boys play for a long while. Finally, though, I couldn’t take it any more, and I had to put my plan in motion.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but where’s your restroom?”

She directed me up the stairs to a little room with just the view I was hoping for. I took out the small blow gun I’d been concealing in my coat pocket and loaded it with a tiny bullet. I opened the window with a great push and took careful aim. The bullets were loaded with a slow-acting poison and manufactured to disintegrate at body temperature.

The boys were playing at assassination, taking turns playing the king and his killer, and then collapsing into giggles.

The first shot was easy. The boy was already playing dead. He simply rubbed his neck, probably assuming he’d been bitten by a mosquito, and moved on. His brother however, playing the role of the celebratory assassin, was quite flighty and required some work to take care of. I was starting to get frustrated, imagining that the woman who’s bathroom I was using would begin to wonder about me, when the boy suddenly flopped to the ground laughing and pointing at his brother, who had apparently done something quite funny. I took my shot, hitting the target spot on.

Flushing the toilet, I hurried back downstairs. The woman didn’t ask, so I didn’t offer any explanation for what I am certain was the longest bathroom break I had ever taken, and we carried on with our snack as if nothing had happened.

Labels: fictions

After a series of world wars brought the planet to the brink of collapse, the last man standing was the Neo-Communist regime of the United Kingdom. When the small island nation was all but wiped from the face of the earth during the third world war, many dismissed it as weak and unable to compete, a perspective the UK used to its great advantage in World War IV. Soon enough, all the remaining nations of the world, including the United States, China, and Brazil, were forced to submit to Britain’s rule.

The Royal Empire soon established a set of world-wide rules designed to uphold the status quo. They banned books, removed local authorities, eradicated entire religions. Countless villages rebelled, and countless more were razed to the ground. Small pockets of resistance sprouted, some of whom remained active throughout the Empire’s rule, and one of whom was even credited with bringing it down.

This most famous resistance group had been in existence since the very beginning of The Royal Empire, and was headed by a mild mannered young man who preferred reading rooms to war rooms and books to missile launchers. Jonathan Little rumored to be immortal. Those at the highest levels of his Underground Library spoke of a gentle and tailored young man who didn’t age.

The King’s Agents had a special division tasked with searching out and destroying Jonathan’s upstart information underground. The papers were filled with government-authorized tales of how the Library Division had managed to root out another branch of the UL, as it was called, but they never managed to catch up with Jonathan himself, a situation which only added to his mystique. As the years passed, he took on a sort of folk aura, and the public began using what little power they still possessed to help him and his librarians evade The King’s Agents.

One such librarian was Lydia Wausau. Before the wars, her family had owned a massive paper company, supplying the world with every kind of paper it needed, from newsprint to photo paper, from generic printing paper to specialty stationary, but the new Royal Empire had ruined that. In a generation, the Wausau family had gone from international business standard to beggars. Although Lydia had been born after World War III, she had heard enough stories to know what the powers that be had done to her family, and she took pleasure in doing everything she could to thwart them, including opening her own branch of The Underground Library. Her particular collection, not surprisingly, specialized on books about paper, and she had some of the most venerated texts on paper producing in the world. At the moment, however, she wasn’t concerned about that. Someone had burst through her front door, and he didn’t look like he wanted to hand out pamphlets.

What he looked, in fact, was innocent. His long hair was two tones, the top half a rich brown and the bottom a light wheat color, and his immaculately tailored pin stripe suit showed barely a wrinkle. If not for the wild look on his face, he might be mistaken for a shoe salesman.

“Where’s your library?” he demanded.

“What?”

“Please, I’m not here to harm you, I’m trying to elude some Agents. Now, I know you have a Branch, where is it?”

“How do you know-“

“Where is it, woman?” he shouted.

Raising an eyebrow, Lydia pointed towards a room filled with books. This was her sanctioned library, the one she showed to government inspectors.

A car door slammed somewhere beyond the door, and Jonathan ducked into the library. Lydia stepped forward to the peephole in her door and spied a late model black sedan and two men in jet black suits striding towards her door.

“The People’s Guide to Citizenship,” she said into the next room. Pull it out, slip it back in and get out of the way.”

A few seconds passed and a metallic shunk filled the room. Lydia joined Jonathan just as the spikes were melting away back into the wall and the bookcase was coming away from the wall.

“That was nice,” Jonathan said over the Agents’ knocks.

“Keeps looters away,” Lydia said.

They both descended a staircase that led to a heavy metal door. Lydia put her finger in a small hole in the center the door, where a blood sample was taken and her DNA analyzed. A few green lights blinked on the door to signify a match, and the door began to swing open. Above them, the bookcase sealed shut just as the Agents burst through Lydia’s front door.

The two of them stepped through the door into a musty smelling vault. Lydia flicked a switch and the room filled with light, revealing stacks upon stacks of books and a small desk with a green-shaded lamp on it. Jonathan wandered forward into the room, taking slow steps as if in a trance.

“Amazing, huh,” Lydia said. “We’ve been getting pretty good business lately, too. You wouldn’t think many people would care to know about making paper anymore, especially on an industrial scale, but I guess there’ll always be people interested in breaking the law…” She shrugged.

Jonathan shook his head. “We found a couple of storerooms full of new books about three months ago,” he said. “We’ve got a few publishers in the ranks, but not enough to produce on a practical scale. Offers of help are pouring in. Everybody wants to learn.”

“We?”

Jonathan turned suddenly and eyed the door. “How secure is that?” he asked.

“Secure enough,” Lydia answered. “Who are you?”

“Did you ever get the new model installed or is that still the 1500?”

She narrowed her eyes. “No, it’s the 1700. Plus a few of my own mods. They won’t be getting through any time soon. Now who are you?”

He still didn’t answer her, instead turning back to the stacks. “But they will get through it,” he said. “I have to get out of here, to lead them away if for nothing else. Do you have a back exit?”

When Lydia gave no answer, Jonathan sighed and headed into the stacks alone.

Behind Lydia, the door beeped, and then there was a soft metallic shunk noise and some even softer gargled screams.

“They’re not going to get through,” she called to him.

“They’re more persistent than you give them credit for,” he called back.

“This library can survive a nuclear bomb,” she said, heading into the stacks after him.

“They don’t need bombs,” he said. “Just persistency and an unlimited budget.”

Lydia didn’t answer this time, instead creeping around the library until she found him, running his fingers lovingly over a particularly old tome open in his hands. “Who are you?” she demanded, coming around the corner to startle him.

He jumped slightly and slid the book back on the shelf like a child caught reading his sister’s diary. The two of them stared at each other for a moment before he spoke. “None of your business. Where’s the back door?”

Before Lydia could repeat her question, an urgent series of beeps erupted from the vault door. Her eyes flew open and the both of them raced back to the entrance.

“Shit!” Lydia muttered. The King’s Agents had somehow managed to breech the tunnel leading to the library. “Who the hell-“

“Where’s that exit?”

With a growl, Lydia turned from the vault entrance and led Jonathan to a spot along the back wall. The door was marked RESTROOM, which indeed it did turn out to be. The window on the far wall, however, turned out to be more than first imagined, as Lydia was easily able to lift it up, revealing what looked like a safe door, complete with number dial. She whipped the dial around once, twice, three times, and swung the door inward. “After you,” she said, motioning Jonathan through first.

With one last glace over his shoulder, Jonathan climbed into the tuned and started crawling. Lydia came after him, slamming the door shut behind her and pushing a few buttons on the wall beside it. The two of them crawled for a solid twenty minutes before reaching a ladder, which in turn let them out about a mile from Lydia’s house. Jonathan helped Lydia to the surface and then shook her hand.

“Thank you,” he said, a sad note in his voice. “And I’m sorry.”

“The library’ll seal itself off,” she said. “They won’t get the books.”

“I know.” He dug a card out of his jacket pocket, scribbled something on it, and handed it to her. “There’s a woman in the cafe at Fifth and Long. She’s got a red patchwork jacket on and she always wears black patent-leather boots. She can offer you some protection from the feds and maybe a new job in the Underground.”

He turned and started to leave, but Lydia followed close behind. “Mr. Director?” she whispered.

Jonathan stop and sighed. “No,” he lied.

“Jonathan Little,” Lydia insisted.

“Currently.”

“Oh my God,” Lydia breathed.

Jonathan finally turned around. “Look, will you just go see Rebecca? She’ll be able to protect you.”

“I don’t want to.” Lydia’s eyes and grin were wide.

Jonathan, on the other hand, did not seem amused. “What?”

“I’m going to stay with you.”

“No.”

“Aw, why not?”

“Because I don’t accept help,” Jonathan all but growled. “Now get yourself to Rebecca.”

Lydia’s mirth seemed undeterred. “Is that some kind of threat?”

Jonathan’s scowl was also undeterred, until he caught a glimpse of a black suit creeping around the corner, at which point he uttered a curse and grabbed Lydia’s wrist.

There was a shout from behind them, followed by a burst of gunfire. Jonathan yanked Lydia to the ground and they crawled into an alley, where a cherry red vintage Porsche convertible was waiting.

“Is this your car?” Lydia said, amazed despite herself.

“Yes. Get in.” He leapt over the door into the front seat, and, barely waiting for Lydia to do the same, started the car by turning the key, slamming the gear shift into place, and stomping on both the clutch and the accelerator simultaneously.

The car leapt to life and nearly flew out of the alley. Jonathan took the corner at speed and kept going, miraculously avoiding both pedestrians and other motorists.

After she’d managed to steady her nerves a bit, Lydia hesitantly turned to look behind them. Another black sedan had appeared to join the first in pursuit of them.

“Keep your head down,” Jonathan said.

She obeyed, turning forward again. Catching sight of the steering wheel, she frowned. The ignition was on the wrong side. “What the hell kind of car is this anyway?”

“A racing model,” Jonathan answered, giving her a sidelong glance. “It’s my favorite one, too, so let’s try not to have an accident on it, huh?”

Lydia’s ire returned with ease. “I’m not a child.”

“Good,” Jonathan interrupted her tirade. He twirled the steering wheel around to avoid an oncoming vehicle and barely succeeded. “You know how to shoot?” he asked his passenger.

“In theory,” she answered warily.

“Time for testing,” he said. “In the glove box.”

Lydia touched the release on the glove box as if it were covered in slime, and was rewarded with a small, black handgun.

Jonathan reached over to flick the safety off. “Try for their tires.”

“I can’t aim!” Lydia protested. She would have protested further, too, except for the burst of what sounded like firecrackers and the bullet that lodged itself in the side mirror next to her. “Time for testing.”

She turned and aimed as best she could with Jonathan still weaving in and out of traffic. A though occurred to her, and she asked, “What if I hit a pedestrian?” Most people had decided to get off of the road, but there were still a few innocent bystanders left around.

Jonathan didn’t answer at first, and she thought she heard the slightest sigh from him. “Just,” he said, his voice much gentler now, “aim the best you can. Don’t worry about it.”

She raised an eyebrow and gave a sigh of her own, but as another burst of gunfire got dangerously close to her head, she decided he was right. She took a few shots, but didn’t hit anything.

Her opponents took their own shots, and Jonathan’s rearview mirror shattered, sending shards of glass all over the front seats. Jonathan swore again, and he put a hand to Lydia’s back. “Hold tight.”

She did as she was told, and the car took a swift turn, peeling out and turning a complete one-eighty. Jonathan stomped on the gas pedal, and they whizzed right past both sedans. The larger cars, built more for surveillance than pursuit, couldn’t make the same turn, and were forced to watch in frustration as Jonathan took a quick right, leaving them to their self-made traffic snarl.

***

Jonathan and Lydia were both still breathing hard when they came to a stop ten or twelve blocks from where they had left their pursuers. Jonathan sank down in his seat, his eyes closed and his head back. He ran his hands through his hair with a wince. “Glass everywhere,” he moaned. “My car’s a wreck. Are you okay?” he asked, turning to Lydia.

“Where the hell did you learn how to drive like that?”

Jonathan let out a small, near hysterical laugh. “It comes in handy more than I’d care for it to, really. Come on, let’s clean off this glass and go find Rebecca.”

This time, Lydia didn’t argue, instead stepping out of the car and helping him brush off the seats. After a few moments, she said, “You really are The Director then.”

Jonathan nodded. “Yeah.”

“Oh man,” Lydia said, her easy grin showing itself again. “To tell you the truth, I kind of didn’t believe you existed.”

Jonathan raised an eyebrow at her.

“Is it true you never age?” she asked.

“Yes,” was the answer.

She stopped fussing at the seat and stood up. “What?”

Jonathan moved on the back seat, picking up a few spent shells and prying a few bullets from the back of the seat.

“Seriously?”

“Yes,” he said again. He pocketed the bullets and took the driver’s seat again. “Let’s go.”

Lydia sat down and studied him in silence. He seemed sure of himself, and his words certainly gave every indication of an attitude problem, but just for a second there when he said yes, she’d been struck by the sadness on his face. It was if that one word aged him a hundred years.

“Stop staring at me,” he said.

She startled. “Sorry.” She turned to watch the street fly past. Rumor had it that The Director was well over two hundred years old, and some even said that he had strange powers. She had always dismissed them out of hand as the ramblings of over-stressed librarians who needed to get out more, but now she wasn’t so sure.

“So how old are you?” she asked at length.

“I don’t know. There wasn’t much point to counting after a while.”

“What happened?”

“The Iranians tested something on Boston in World War III. Something biological. I used to live there.”

“I thought Boston was completely destroyed.”

“Will you just keep an eye out for black sedans please?”

***

Jonathan continued to drive aimlessly around the city for hours. He needed to be sure no one was following them, even if only temporarily. At length, he pulled over.

“Your stop,” he said to Lydia.

She only stared at him. “What?”

“Go to that address I gave you. Rebecca will protect you. She’s a reporter, she’s got contacts.”

“What about you?”

“I’ve got things to do,” Jonathan said.

Lydia gave him once last look over, but eventually sighed and stepped out of the car. “Alright,” she said. “Thank you. Take care of yourself.”

He nodded. “You too. Tell Rebecca I said hi.”

With that, he started off again. He hadn’t gotten halfway towards the next intersection, however, when a flash of movement in his sole remaining side mirror caught his eye. He slammed on the breaks and whipped his body around just in time to see a pair of black suits approach and shoot Lydia.

A half choked “No!” slipped from his throat and was joined by shouts from the few people on the street. Normal citizens, however, knew enough to leave The King’s Agents to their jobs without question, and no one moved to alert the authorities.

One of the suits spoke into a device attached to his sleeve cuff while the other began searching Lydia’s body. As Jonathan watched, this second suit found the card he’d given her. Jonathan’s stomach sank through to the pavement. Without another thought, he put the car in gear and took off as fast as he could, not caring if the suits saw him or not. He had to make it to Rebecca.

***

He used the same technique getting there as he had eluding the suits earlier that day. Swerve and pray. He knew there were Agents everywhere, and that the cafe where Rebecca normally spent her days was likely to be crawling with them. He tried not to think about how probable it was that they had already arrested her, and concentrated on making his little car go as fast as it could.

He blasted on the horn and tore down the street, taking corners at speeds more likely to be found on the Autobahn of the twenty-first century than the modern urban thoroughfare of the twenty-third, but the Porsche had been built just for such circumstances and it performed admirably.

Just more than three minutes after he’d witnessed Lydia gunned down in front of him, he screeched to a halt in front of the cafe and jumped out of the car. He burst through the glass doors, shouting. “Rebecca!”

A woman who didn’t look much older than Jonathan was already on her feet at a booth against the far wall. “I’m coming. Get in the car.”

Jonathan didn’t move. He waited the two seconds while she threw her bag over her shoulder and the two of them raced back to the car together. He peeled out again just as a fleet of black sedans turned the corner behind him.

Rebecca didn’t waste any time in fishing a semi-automatic handgun out of her bag and putting it to good use. She disabled three sedans right in a row before ducking behind the seat as a flurry of shots flew over the car.

Jonathan took them around blind corners, one, two, three, in quick succession, hoping to lose them, but there were simply too many of them. Rebecca took out two more sedans and turned around in the seat.

“Take that third left,” she said, taking a small metal sphere from her bag. “And be ready to run.”

Jonathan did as he was told, taking the turn at top speed as usual. He turned into a short alleyway, the end of which had been bricked up. He slammed on the breaks, but it wasn’t going to be enough.

“Jump!” Rebecca ordered, and they both did at once, rolling away from the car just as it crashed into the brick, sending the front seats into the trunk.

“This way!” Rebecca barked out another order, shoving Jonathan through a door and into a pitch black room. Once inside, she found his wrist and pulled him after her up a flight of stairs and across another dark room.

They climbed three more stories this way, Jonathan’s eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness. They were in a disused factory, broken machinery strewn about the place and sharp implements hanging from the ceiling.

At last, Rebecca led him to one end of the building and told him to wait. She went to peek out a window at the other end of the room and then came back. “Come here,” she said, tucking the both of them down behind one of the larger machines. She had a squeeze trigger in her hand, and all at once Jonathan understood. She’d set a bomb in the car. His face paled, but he didn’t say anything, instead just hunkering down as best he could and covering his ears. He felt her put her arm around him and then…

***

“In other news, a massive explosion wracked Birminghamshire this afternoon. King’s Agents said at a press conference this afternoon that the incident was still under investigation, but that it was likely an accident caused by the poor state of the many factories in the area.”

Jonathan, from his place on a hotel bed, hit the power button and threw the remote across at the TV.

The door opened and Rebecca came in, holding a tray of sandwiches and crackers. She set it down on the bed next to him and started in on her own lunch. “Come on,” she said, her mouth full, “you’ve got to eat something.”

Jonathan gave a heavy sigh and pulled a cracker from the tray. He ate it slowly and then flopped backwards onto the bed. “Are you okay?” he said at last.

Rebecca eyed him suspiciously. “Have you ever asked me that before?” she said.

He turned his head to look at her, but didn’t answer.

“Then don’t start now,” she said. “Eat up. We need to get going.”

Staunchly stiffening his upper lip, Jonathan took another sandwich. She was right. They had to find another safehouse, find out what kind of damage had been done to Lydia’s library and what options they had for retrieval. And Jonathan Little was going to have to disappear. Jonathan Wausau had things to do.

Labels: fictions