Mr. Fahrenheit

by T. Michael Martin

  “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.”

  “Okay?”

  “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-gahs.

  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.

  18

  Benji felt himself being slammed against the cold metal side of the X-ray mobile. He blinked, trying to clear his vision. All he could see was a vague shape, but the shape looked like himself, as if he was looking in a blurry mirror. A red light was flashing somewhere. He forced himself to take a deep breath.

  “Benjamin,” the blurry shape whispered, “are you hurt?”

  Shock and relief surged through Benji. “Papaw?”

  “Are you hurt, boy?”

  “I—no. Zeeko is.”

  Benji’s vision cleared a bit. Papaw didn’t look surprised by the news that Zeeko was injured. “How bad is it?” Papaw said.

  “He’s okay.”

  “Who else is here with you?”

  “Nobody. Papaw, what happened to you? What happened at the house?”

  “Quiet, son!” Papaw said urgently.

  In the red, whirling light thrown by the police flasher atop Papaw’s car, Benji began to notice things: Papaw was wearing his sheriff’s hat and uniform, and to Benji, those were normally the symbols and talismans of his grandfather’s strength. Now a thin line of blood leaked out from the brim of Papaw’s hat; the cloth of his collar was gashed.

  But the worst thing of all was the look in Papaw’s eyes.

  Sheriff Robert Lightman’s gaze was normally a bright hard gray, carrying the color and character of steel. But the gray had undergone a metamorphosis, changing into the shade of a sky tortured by an approaching storm.

  For the first time in Benji’s life, Papaw looked afraid, and somehow that was more frightening by far than anything that had happened tonight.

  Hearing a squeal of brakes, Papaw and Benji looked down to the end of the alley that was not blocked by Papaw’s car. There was not much light, only the pulse of the flasher, but there was enough to see. McKedrick had retrieved his SUV, and now he parked it about a hundred feet away, across the other end of the alleyway, sealing them inside.

  McKedrick stepped out. Benji had felt victorious when he’d stolen the agent’s pistol and “disarmed” him, but he realized now how stupid that had been: McKedrick was carrying a compact shotgun, something Benji had never seen anyone in law enforcement do.

  “Lightman—both of you—it’s over! Get down on the ground NOW!”

  “Benjamin,” Papaw whispered, “don’t you say one thing or move one muscle.”

  And before Benji could reply, Papaw strode away to meet the man in black, who snicked off the safety of his shotgun and aimed it squarely at Papaw’s chest.

  Benji had, of course, zero intention of following Papaw’s instructions. He began to chase Papaw but had only gone a few feet when he felt hands seize his arm.

  “Benji, no!” hissed Zeeko, who’d gotten out of the X-ray mobile.

  “Let me go, Zeeko!”

  “Evenin’, sir,” Papaw said, greeting the agent as they neared each other, “and how the heck are you?” He sounded happy to see McKedrick, eager to charm his fellow lawman. As if Papaw hadn’t noticed the rage on his face, or the death stick in his hands.

  “Sheriff Lightman,” McKedrick said coldly, “I believe you know Standard Operating Procedure. Put your hands on the back of your head and lace your fingers.”

  Benji thrashed in Zeeko’s grip; his friend held tighter, bear-hugging him despite his injury. “For the love of Christ, listen to me,” Zeeko whispered in his ear. “The pod—”

  “What, now?” Papaw answered McKedrick, cupping a hand behind one ear. “Couldn’t quite make out that last part, sorry.”

  “I tried to play nice. But you and your grandson are now property of the United States government.”

  “Papaw, he’s after something we found! McKedrick, he doesn’t know anything! Just take the pod and leave him alone!”

  But it was like a nightmare: No matter how loud Benji yelled, Papaw didn’t react, didn’t even seem to hear him. . . .

  “I think you hear me fine, Sheriff.” McKedrick sneered. “Stop right there and put your face on the goddamn pavement.”

  Papaw replied, just a few steps from the agent, “Now listen, I know I look not a day over forty, but my hearin’ aid is bein’ fritzy. One more time, if you’d be so very kind. I wanna know what’s got you riled.”

  And then fireworks detonated overhead, rendering the dark alleyway suddenly shadowless and vivid. Papaw looked over McKedrick’s shoulder, toward the SUV, and he shouted, in a voice filled with the same fear Benji had seen on his face, “Get the hell outta here, honey!”

  Panicked, McKedrick whirled, firing the shotgun in time with the delayed boom of the fireworks. Someone screamed, and everything in Benji went cold: It was Ellie. She’d followed them to the alley and had been trying to silently crawl over the hood of the SUV.

  A hundred holes eviscerated the side of the SUV; the driver’s window imploded. Ellie fell from the hood and landed on the ground on the near side of the vehicle.

  Benji screamed, his fury at last freeing him from Zeeko’s grasp. He sprinted toward Papaw and McKedrick, but most of all toward Ellie, not knowing if she had been hit.

  The finale fireworks of the parade bellowed brightly, a billion points of apocalypse light illuminating the alley.

  McKedrick pumped his shotgun, the weapon expending a smoking shell as he pivoted back toward Papaw.

  Papaw tilted backward, violently backward, like a gunslinger falling to an inglorious death in a dusty street.

  But he wasn’t falling: He was preparing. He was cocking his fist back.

  Papaw launched a haymaker punch at Agent McKedrick with the speed and grace of a teenage heavyweight champion. McKedrick took the cataclysmic crash across his jaw. His head snapped backward, a thin line of blood arcing from his chin like the flourish of a signature. He crumpled to the ground like dead weight, his shotgun skittering across the concrete.

  Benji skidded to a stop, dumbfounded. Papaw rubbed his fist into his other palm, shoulders heaving as his punch echoed in the gray canyon of the alley.

  “Sheriff! Hot damn!” Ellie cried shakily. Benji saw with blinding relief that she was standing up beside the SUV, brushing shattered glass from her pants.

  The last light and sound of the fireworks died. Staring at the fallen McKedrick, Papaw said, “Ellie, honey, I want you to get in that fancy car and follow me out of here. Benjamin and Zeeko, I need to ask for your help carrying this man to the Caddie.”

  Benji flinched as a hand grabbed his shoulder. He turned back. The swiping fire of Papaw’s police flasher swept over Zeeko’s face. His eyes were wide as saucers.

  “Benji,” he said, “the pod is empty.”

  Empty.

  Benji felt the word hit him like a depth charge, like a detonation heard but not yet felt.

  “There’s nothing inside,” said Zeeko.

  “You mean no ‘Thing’ inside,” Papaw said. He finally looked at Benji. “The pod’s empty because the beast got out, Benjamin. It came to our house. And It’s in one hell of a bad mood.”

  There was the depth-charge shockwave: BOOM.

  “What?” Benji said. “You know, Papaw?!”

  But suddenly the whirling dome atop Papaw’s car shattered, a miniature nova of sparks and glass. The frozen air seemed to plummet by ten degrees. All at once, Benji inexplicably felt like he was standing on railroad tracks that had just begun to vibrate beneath him. Something was coming.

  Next moment, a sound like a siren amplified beyond imagining flooded the alley. He clapped his hands over his ears; Papaw, Ellie, and Zeeko did the same. The earsplitting sound awoke McKedrick, who attempted to prop himself up on his el
bows.

  “It’s coming!” Papaw bellowed.

  “Papaw, what’s happening?”

  “Mary and Joseph, I thought I might’ve killed It back at the house today but It’s still alive. We have to go, Benjamin, It’s coming for y—”

  The pitch of the siren changed, and Benji realized it was not a siren at all: It was a blaring musical note, a chord from a guitar, and now it was replaced by a young man’s melodious voice:

  “We got Captain Celsius, back there on the snares and bass! Yes sir, that’s right, he’s a rock ’n’ roll ace!”

  A manhole cover lay in the concrete floor of the alleyway between Benji and Papaw. The manhole cover began to quiver, then to dance. Sickly green light radiated from the sewer below.

  “I’m Kid Nuclear, want to know my job?” the song went on. “I’m the singer of the Atomic Bobs!”

  Spears of green light flew through the manhole cover holes like arrows of war fired at the heavens.

  The cover erupted, spiraling into the air, higher and higher and eclipsing the moon, and just before the music died with abrupt finality, the phantom singer roared one last lyric:

  “And hey, who’s that on guitar tonight? Well, that’s Bob Lightman, MR. FA—!”

  And the Voyager rose.

  Perhaps it was fitting, after all, that the moment should feel unreal: The arrival of the magically impossible had been rehearsed ten thousand times in Benji’s dreams. It had been the shape of his hope, the great secret of his heart that he wanted to share with no one and the whole world.

  Unreal, yes. But not like this.

  Ever since he’d shot it from the sky, the creature had made Benji feel like a kid. But until this moment, as the creature emerged from the sewer, he had forgotten that childhood carried its own terrors. And the hole in the ground before him seemed to Benji to be a dark closet. It was the closet door you hear creaking beside you when everyone else at the sleepover is asleep but you are still awake. It was the door that you swear is shut but whose hinges softly cry as the clock downstairs is striking three and invoking the witching hour, when graveyards are reputed to yawn. It was every dark bedroom closet from all of kidhood’s nightmares, and witch and werewolf and demon and vampire and dead kid are waiting in there, and if you try to move, the door will roar open like a dark eternal mouth, and it will be their black eyes you see flashing at you, their ice fingers that enwrap your naked ankles, and in the morning, all that will be left of you will be a streak of blood and the desperate, doomed tracks your fingers carved into the carpet.