Live and Let Shop

by Michael P. Spradlin

  We all agreed that it was the best plan—he sounded so authoritative. Our ship was closest. I headed up the gangway with Blankenship right behind me. As we reached the deck, I looked back at Pilar, Alex, and Brent and waved. They waved back and headed off down the dock to their ship.

  Blankenship directed me toward the rear of the ship.

  “Let’s start at the stern and work our way forward,” he said. I never got that stern, port, starboard stuff, but I assumed he meant back to front. Why did ship people have to have a different name for everything?

  We walked down a couple of levels and then out onto a long hallway that seemed to run the length of the entire ship. All of a sudden I had an eerie feeling that I had seen this hallway somewhere before, like in a dream.

  I stopped when I realized that Blankenship wasn’t following me. He was standing by the stairs we had descended, watching me. I noticed I was now opposite a doorway that led into a large room full of crates and boxes. On the far wall was a painting of the silhouette of a bull’s head.

  Something was wrong. I looked back at Blankenship again and saw that he had unbuttoned his trench coat to reveal a black shirt and a large gold medallion around his neck. The medallion had a carving of a bull’s head on it—the same design that was painted on the wall in the room before me. I nearly fainted. I had seen that same image in my dream.

  “Well, that was easy,” he said. The way he said it made my stomach lurch. His voice was dripping with sarcasm, and it had turned cold and evil.

  “What are you doing? Who are you? Where is Mr. Kim?” I tried, and failed, to keep the fear out of my voice.

  “I’ve already told you. My name is Simon Blankenship. But you may call me Mithras.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  And That’s No Bull

  “I don’t understand. What are you doing? What is going on here?” I stormed down the hallway and tried to elbow my way past him. He grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me so I staggered a few steps back down the hall.

  “You’re not going anywhere, Miss Buchanan.”

  “Who are you?” I asked again. I was scared, but I was also starting to get angry. Two strange men came down the steps behind Blankenship. He ordered them to go out and gather up “the others.” They turned and left. Blankenship started walking toward me down the hall.

  I backed up because he had a look in his eyes that was completely evil. He was staring at me with total concentration. I had had about enough of everybody staring at me like I was some kind of freak: Judge Kerrigan, Pilar, Mr. Kim peering around corners at me all the time, and now this whack job.

  “Don’t you know it’s rude to stare?” I said. I know, it was lame, but I was under a little pressure and it was the best I could come up with. If I got out of this, I swore, I would write down a list of good comebacks and memorize it.

  He didn’t say anything. Now we had reached the doorway that led into the bull room. I didn’t want to go in there, but he shoved me through the door and stepped in after me. The room was pretty large; it looked like the ship had been rebuilt somehow so that the cargo hold could be converted into this big room.

  Blankenship still didn’t say anything. He just kind of strolled around like he was thinking something through.

  “Where is Mr. Kim?” I said.

  “I have no idea where your precious Mr. Kim is. Off on a fool’s errand somewhere, I’d expect. He always was thick.” Blankenship snorted when he said it, as if Mr. Kim was barely worth thinking about.

  “I thought you were his friend.” This guy had to be a total psychopath. When he’d talked about Mr. Kim before, I’d have sworn he was ready to cry at the thought of Mr. Kim in danger. Now he only sounded hateful.

  “Maybe. Once. But Johnny and I haven’t seen eye to eye in quite some time. Ever since I fell into that temple, in fact.”

  “So that was all true?”

  “Oh yes. All of what I told you is true—except the parts that were not. I really did discover the temple and it really did hold the Book of Seraphim. A fantastic discovery, and one that I was destined to make. But Johnny has so little vision. He didn’t understand or appreciate what we’d found. He took the book from me and gave it to the Kuzbekistan government, not realizing that it was my destiny to have that book. It is the only way to bring Mithras to light,” he said.

  Okay. Definitely crazy.

  “What do you mean bring Mithras to light?” I asked. I figured I should keep asking questions. If I could stall long enough, maybe Alex and Pilar and Brent could come up with something.

  “Emperor Flavius believed himself to be Mithras reborn. But he was wrong. So he hid the book and the Seven Sacred Artifacts. Flavius believed that one day Mithras’ true heir would find the book and bring Mithras forth to shine his darkness on the world.”

  What a lunatic. Not only was he a madman, now he was using bad metaphors. How in the world can you “shine” darkness? Creep. But he was starting to get really worked up with this story, and it was making me a little nervous. More nervous than I was already. Which was very.

  “So you think you’re the heir to Mithras?” I asked. Got to keep him talking. If he was talking he’d be too busy to kill me. I hoped.

  “I don’t think it, lassie. I know it. And Johnny does too. He saw it. But he doesn’t understand what he saw. And he’s been in my way for the last twenty years. That will all end soon.” He walked over to a little pedestal that stood beneath the painted bull’s head on the wall. It was some type of altar or something, and there on the pedestal I could see the Book of Seraphim lying open, just like it had been displayed in the gallery. Blankenship put out his hands and laid them gently on the book, like he was trying to bring it to life or something. What a weirdo. I had to think of another way to stall him.

  But at that moment, Pilar and Brent came stumbling into the room, followed by the two men Blankenship had sent after them. There went that plan.

  “Where is the third?” Blankenship yelled at them.

  “There were only these two. They were on their way up the gangway when we grabbed them. We couldn’t find the other one,” said one of the men.

  “Idiots. Search the ship. Make sure he hasn’t gotten on board. We don’t want any loose ends,” Blankenship said. He stopped at the doorway, turned to me, and said, “I’ll deal with you later.” Then he slammed the door and we heard the latch fall into place. We were alone in the room.

  “Are you guys all right?” I asked.

  “Yeah. What’s going on?” Pilar said. “Why is Mr. Blankenship locking us in here?”

  “He tricked us. I think he’s the one who sent the e-mail. He’s definitely wacko—apparently he thinks he is the living reincarnation of Mithras, or will be as soon as he has the Book of Seraphim and seven sacred objects or something like that.” I made a twirling motion with my finger by my head. “He’s nuts. Where’s Alex?” I asked.

  “We’re not sure,” Brent said. “We’d started down toward the other ship, but before we got there, Pilar had one of her feelings.”

  “Then I figured out that the name of this ship, the R.A. Smith, is another anagram for Mithras,” Pilar said. “That made us suspicious, and we started to think that something might be wrong. We decided we’d come back and check on you. I don’t know what happened to Alex.”

  We tried the door to the hallway, but it was locked tight. We looked around the room. The ceiling was very high, about forty feet above us. There were a couple of hatches in it that must have been used to access the cargo hold. Maybe if we could get up there and get one open, we could crawl out onto the deck and escape.

  I was nervous and so I started talking. “What we really need to do is figure a way up to those hatches. Of course, that would involve climbing, and I have to tell you I’m a little sick of all the exercise that I’m getting at this stupid school,” I said. It was true. Ever since I’d been at Blackthorn it was like all exercise all the time. Plus, all the climbing—climbing out the school window, c
limbing the rock wall in Physical Training. Back in Beverly Hills the only climbing I ever did was over Jamie to get to a clearance rack at the Gap.

  But while I was in midrant, Pilar and Brent were already taking action. They maneuvered some of the crates and boxes around so that we had a mini-mountain in the middle of the room. And then I realized how well Blackthorn Academy had trained them. They didn’t even realize it, but they were in full problem-solving mode. They weren’t joking around or complaining like me. They were focused on what they had to do and how to do it with no idle chitchat. How well Mr. Kim had prepared them. Whether it was the academics or the Tae Kwon Do training or whatever, here they were being confronted with a problem and figuring out a way to solve it. I didn’t know if that was really cool or totally bizarre. But that school was definitely teaching its students to be thinkers and doers. That was becoming more and more clear.

  Almost before I realized it, they had stacked all the crates and boxes in the room into a pyramid right below one of the ceiling hatches. Brent climbed to the top, but couldn’t quite reach the latch.

  “Pilar, you’re going to have to get on my shoulders and see if you can open the latch,” he said. Pilar scampered up the pile of crates and was on Brent’s shoulders in a matter of seconds. She grabbed hold of the rusty latch and started to twist it. “I don’t think I can get it,” she said. “It’s pretty rusty. See if you can find anything I could use as a lever.”

  While she kept trying, I scouted around the room. Over in the corner, on top of a crate we hadn’t used, I found a small crowbar. I stuck it in my pants pocket and started to crawl up the stack. I was about halfway up when the latch door flew open with a screech of rusted metal and Alex appeared, staring down at us.

  “Did you guys order a pizza?” he joked.

  Alex reached down and grabbed Pilar by her arms, pulling her up and out.

  “Rachel, come on up and I’ll boost you out,” Brent said.

  I was almost to the top when an explosion rocked the ship. The stack of crates that Pilar and Brent had carefully balanced started to tip. It seemed like it happened in slow motion, but I saw Alex reach down through the hatch and grab Brent by the arms. The crate that Brent stood on fell away, and he was dangling in midair. Then I lost sight of him, because another explosion sent shock waves through the room and I was falling through the air to the floor below.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Don’t Have a Cow

  I came to a few minutes later. I could smell smoke coming from somewhere. Alex and Brent were looking down at me from the hatch above and hollering for me to wake up. Miraculously I had landed on some packing material and it had mostly cushioned my fall. None of the crates fell on me either, which was incredibly lucky. I had reinjured my wrist, though, and I was going to have a major headache. Ever since I’d come to this school, I’d had nothing but bumps and bruises. I couldn’t wait for spring break. Did Blackthorn even have a spring break? They probably sent everyone out west to climb the Rockies.

  “Are you all right?” Brent called down to me.

  “Yeah, I think so.” I stood up and shook my head. “What’s going on? What was that explosion?”

  “Something is burning on the back of the ship. Looks like some containers or something exploded. Hang on. Alex went to look for some rope to try to get you out of there,” he said.

  But I couldn’t wait. Smoke was pouring into the room from the open hatch, and the only door out was locked. I started to push one of the big crates back toward the hatch, but I didn’t think I’d be able to get them stacked up by myself.

  I was thinking that maybe this wasn’t going to turn out well, when the door screeched open and Blankenship came in. He paused to glance at the open hatch and the crates that had fallen all over the place. Then he strode over to me and grabbed my arm.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  He started dragging me toward the door. I reached for the little crowbar I had stuck in my pocket, swung it around as hard as I could, and brought it crashing down on his elbow. He screamed in agony and grabbed his left arm. Score one for Rachel Buchanan. I started to run for the door when I heard a whirring sound behind me. Brent hollered for me to look out, and I turned to see Blankenship advancing on me with a whirling nun-chukka in his right hand. It was going around and around faster than I could see. I screamed and ducked as he flicked the weapon toward me and it whizzed right over my head. Blankenship was about to launch another strike when his legs suddenly went out from under him and he landed on his back.

  It was Mr. Kim! He had swung down through the hatch on a cable harness attached to his belt, right into Blankenship, sending him sprawling. Mr. Kim disconnected the cable from his belt and stepped between me and Blankenship as Simon scrambled to his feet. He was still clutching his sore arm. I have to admit that made me feel kind of good.

  “Enough, Simon! It’s over,” Mr. Kim shouted.

  Simon lunged at Mr. Kim with a roar. At the last second he stopped, pivoted, and launched a spin kick at Mr. Kim’s head. Mr. Kim grabbed his foot and kicked him twice in the rib cage. Blankenship went down momentarily but jumped to his feet. He feinted a punch with his good arm and then managed to get off a kick at Mr. Kim’s chest. It caught Mr. Kim square and sent him to the ground.

  That startled me. I was used to seeing Mr. Kim in practice at the do jang, and the thought that he could be taken down by anyone was a shock. But then I remembered that Blankenship was in the Special Forces too, and he probably knew his way around the martial arts just like Mr. Kim. The smoke was getting thicker, stinging my eyes and making it harder to see what was going on. Not to mention that whole death-by-smoke-inhalation thing. I coughed and backed up against the wall to make sure I wasn’t in the way.

  Mr. Kim got back to his feet and Blankenship came at him again. Faster than I could see it, Mr. Kim launched a back kick that took Blankenship in the jaw. It sounded like it hurt. Blankenship went down, but not all the way down. He landed half in and half out of the doorway. He jumped up, stepped back, and slammed the door shut with his good arm. We heard the latch fall into place. Uh-oh. His footsteps echoed away down the hall.

  More and more smoke was pouring into the room from the deck above.

  “What’s burning?” I asked Mr. Kim

  “I needed to create a little diversion. There were some containers of highly flammable magnesium on the back of the deck. But the wind has shifted and this hold is filling with smoke. Let’s pile up the crates again—and while we do that, tell me how you got here.”

  Mr. Kim grabbed a box and moved it back to the spot below the hatch. He gestured for me to do the same. We started to restack the boxes, and while we worked I filled him in. It wasn’t easy, because it was getting harder and harder to breathe. But I told Mr. Kim everything about how I’d seen him talking to the FBI agents, and found his secret hideaway—and how it needed an elevator, by the way—and how we got to D.C. and ran into Blankenship and got on the ship and were now fighting for our lives. I figured that Mr. Kim was going to find this out anyway, so I might as well tell him while he was preoccupied with the whole defeating a supervillain and the smoking fire and stuff, so he’d be too busy to yell at me.

  “I see,” said Mr. Kim when I finished. “Anything else?”

  “Nope, that about sums it up,” I said.

  “All right. Let’s get out of here.”

  He started climbing up the boxes. I was up on the first box when I remembered something.

  “Wait!” I said. I jumped down and ran across the room to where the pedestal stood. The book was still lying there. It was big, and it was going to be tough to hold on to. But we needed to get it away from that madman.

  Mr. Kim shouted, “Rachel. Leave the book! There’s no time!” But I was already there.

  When I reached down to pick up the book, the strangest thing happened. I heard this deep and guttural evil laugh echoing through the room. It seemed like the air around me started to glow and the pedestal began
to pulsate under my hands. I dropped the book back onto the pedestal. The laughter got louder and louder, and it sounded so horrible that I was frozen with fear. The smoke around me started to thicken, and for a moment I thought I saw a bull standing on human legs in front of me. The bull-man-thing put its head back and roared. It was the most horrible sound I’d ever heard, and it felt like it cut right through me to the center of my soul. The creature looked at me and its eyes turned red. Flames shot out of its mouth and it roared again. It took a step toward me and reached out its arms as if to grab me. I screamed, and all at once the laughter stopped and the creature, if there was a creature, disappeared in a flash of blinding light. I fell to my knees. I couldn’t see, and the smoke was getting thicker and I couldn’t breathe very well. I struggled up and grabbed the book and stumbled my way back to Mr. Kim.

  “Did you see that?” I yelled.

  “See what?” said Mr. Kim. He was standing on the pile of boxes, waiting for me.

  “That bull-man-thing? Over there, when I went to get the book? Didn’t you hear it?”

  Mr. Kim looked at me, and his face was stricken. But he tried to hide his reaction.

  “I didn’t see anything,” he said. “Probably the smoke is playing tricks with your eyes. Come on.” Smoke playing tricks. Yeah, that must be it. Either that or I’ve just gone completely insane.

  We started our climb toward the hatch, with smoke billowing down around us. Alex and Brent were still waiting for us. We were about halfway up the pile when disaster struck. Another explosion rocked the ship, sending us falling to the floor. More smoke rushed into the hold.

  “What do we do now? I can hardly breathe,” I said, coughing.

  The cable that Mr. Kim had ridden down into the hold was still hanging from the hatch above. He grabbed it and fastened it into a little black gizmo that was attached to his belt.