A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(83)

“I did,” said Millard. “I’m invisible. Sorry, should’ve mentioned that.”

“Millard!” Bronwyn exclaimed. “You are so daft!”

But the kid didn’t seem freaked out. “Oh, okay,” he said, nodding highly. “If I were you? Combo two, for sure.”

“Then please prepare us a combo two,” said Millard.

“And five hamburgers, please!” Enoch shouted from the back seat. “With everything. And chips.”

“We don’t have chips,” the guy said.

“He means french fries,” I said.

The kid charged me, I paid, and then he went into the kitchen to prepare the food. He came back a few minutes later and handed me a heavy paper bag that was already turning clear from grease stains. I unrolled the top and looked inside. There were a lot of burgers, a huge order of fries, and a wad of napkins. I distributed the food to my friends, and at the bottom of the bag I noticed a small white envelope. It was fancy-looking and sealed with red wax.

“What’s this?” I said, holding it up to show the others.

Emma shrugged. “Part of the combo?”

I drove into the lot, parked, and opened the envelope. I turned on the dome light to read by, and everyone leaned over to look. Inside the envelope was another napkin, but this one had been typed on. With a typewriter. The greasy napkin read:

Uncontacted subject being hunted, highly threatened.

Mission: protect and extract.

Suggest delivery to loop 10044.

Extreme caution advised.

That was it. The uncontacted peculiar wasn’t named. It didn’t specify where loop 10044 was. But on the back of the napkin was a set of coordinates.

“I can read coordinates,” Millard said excitedly. “The line of longitude number is negative, which means it’s well west of the prime meridian—”

“It’s a high school in Brooklyn, New York,” I said, holding up my phone. “I typed them into the Maps app.”





Millard harrumphed. “No piece of technology can replace a real cartographer.”

“We’ve got a mission, and we’ve got a location,” Emma said. “The only thing we don’t have is the name of the peculiar we’re looking for.”

“Maybe H doesn’t know the name, either,” said Bronwyn, “and finding it out is part of the mission.”

“Or it’s for security,” said Enoch. “You wouldn’t want to go around naming uncontacted peculiars on napkins that could fall into the hands of, say, a hamburger chef.”

“I think he’s more than simply a chef,” said Millard. “Say, Jacob, would you mind pulling round to his window again?”

I started the car, rounded the small building, and drove back into the drive-through lane. When he slid the window open this time, he looked annoyed. “Uhhh. Hi.”

Millard leaned out the window. “Sorry to trouble you, old boy. If we could just have one of your combo number threes.”

The kid typed the order onto a greasy keyboard and charged me $10.50. As I was paying, Bronwyn leaned toward the open window and said, “Do you know H? Are you a hollow-hunter? What is this place?”

He gave me my change, acting as if he hadn’t heard her.

“Hey!” said Bronwyn.

He turned and went into the kitchen.

“I don’t think he’s allowed to answer questions like that,” I said.

After a minute he came back and dropped a greasy paper bag onto the window ledge. It made a solid thud as it landed.

“You have a great night, now,” he said, and shut the window.

I picked up the bag, which was unusually heavy, and unrolled the top. Nothing but french fries and onion rings. Not much of a combo, I thought, handing it to Millard as I pulled out of the lot and headed back toward the highway. It was a long way to Brooklyn, and I wanted to get going before the morning rush hour turned the major arteries into parking lots.

Ten minutes later, as we were flying up I-95, Millard had eaten his way to the bottom of the bag. I heard him laugh and turned my head to look. He pulled out something heavy and egg-shaped.

“What’s that?” I said.

“Combo number three, it would seem. French fries and a hand grenade.” Bronwyn yelped and ducked behind my seat.

It seemed OK Burger was more than just a message relay station. It was a peculiar weapons depot. I wondered how many of my grandfather’s secret way stations were like this, hiding in plain sight. (I also wondered what prize came with a combo number one.)

Millard chuckled, rolling the grease-covered grenade from one hand to another. “My, they really do give you more for your money!”



* * *



? ? ?

I drove, nibbling at my meal with one hand while my friends scarfed theirs. Their teenage bodies, now aging forward for the first time in many years, were sometimes insatiably hungry. After they finished they all fell into a deep sleep—all but Emma, next to me in the passenger seat. She said she didn’t want to sleep if I couldn’t.

For an hour we hardly spoke. I scanned through radio stations at a low volume while she watched the dark world slide by outside the window. We were halfway through Virginia when a pale gray dawn began to smear the sky. The silence between us felt like a stone forming in my chest. I’d been talking to Emma in my head for the last fifty miles, and finally I couldn’t take it anymore.