The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (Alfred Kropp #1)(35)

“No, leave it, Kropp.”

I sighed and dropped it back onto the seat.

“Lemme ask you something, Bennacio. What’s with the swords and daggers and bows and arrows and medieval stuff like that? Aren’t you knights allowed to carry guns?”

“There’s nothing that prohibits us.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“It is mostly a matter of pride. You may think otherwise, but guns are far more barbaric than swords. There is no elegance to a firearm, Alfred.”

He smiled. “Besides, our way is more fun.”

We started to walk. We hadn’t gone very far, maybe a quarter of a mile, when I stopped walking. Bennacio, his head bowed, deep in thought, kept walking for several yards before noticing I wasn’t beside him. He stopped and watched as I sat down and wrapped my arms around my knees.

It had turned into a nice day, with just a few wisps of cloud and a light breeze from the south. I lifted my face to the sun. Bennacio came back to me and sat down.

“I’ll be honest with you, Bennacio. I’m pretty shaken up right now. I know this sort of thing must be normal for a knight, but what happened back there freaked me out a little. No. Not a little. A lot. You go to the movies and you watch these guys in car chases and shoot-outs and you think, hey, I could do that. I mean, you sit there in the dark theater and you kind of wish it was you up there taking out the bad guys. But it isn’t like that in real life, though this whole thing is starting to feel more like a movie than real life—which is weird, because I’m starting to miss my real life, even though it sucked. I’m not sure how much farther I can go.”

“I see.” He sighed. There was a sad look in his eyes. “Unfortunately, we cannot stay here long, Alfred. The police will be here soon—and perhaps worse.”

“More AODs?”

“AODs?”

“Agents of darkness.”

He smiled. “Yes. AODs. Quite so.”

“I don’t want to hold you up, Bennacio. You’ve got an important job to do—saving the world and everything, and it’s kind of selfish of me to tag along. Especially when I’m not even sure I want to be tagging along.”

“You do not give yourself enough credit, Alfred. Without you, I would not have survived this morning.”

He obviously said it to make me feel better, but I didn’t think he didn’t believe it.

“Broadway,” he said suddenly.

“Huh?”

He was smiling. “You asked what kind of music I like. I love show tunes.”

I don’t know why, but I laughed out loud.

“I am particularly fond of Lerner and Loewe. Camelot. Have you heard of it?” He sang softly. “ ‘In short there’s simply not/A more congenial spot/For happy-ever-aftering than here in/Camelot!’ Predictable, I know.”

I cracked up. It helped. “We gotta get a ride somehow, Bennacio,” I said after I caught my breath. “We can’t walk the whole way to Halifax.”

Bennacio stood up. “No, we cannot. Get up, Kropp, and stand with your hands by your sides.”

He was staring down the road, and I stood up and looked with him. I heard the siren before I saw the car and the flashing lights.

“Great,” I said. “Cops.”

The patrol car pulled into the emergency lane, cut the siren, but left the blue-and-reds spinning. The patrolman stepped out of the car, his hand on the butt of his pistol.

“Get on your knees with your hands behind your head!” he shouted at us. “Now!”

“Do as he says,” Bennacio said quietly, and we kneeled on the pavement and I laced my fingers behind my head. The patrolman’s shoes went scrape-scrape against the concrete as he came toward us.

“You fellows know anything about what happened back there?” he asked.

“We ran out of gas,” Bennacio said.

“Looks like you did more than that,” the cop said. He stopped a couple of feet from Bennacio, his gun drawn now and aimed at Bennacio’s high forehead.

“I have a gun,” Bennacio said calmly, as if he were remarking on the weather. “Behind my back.”

“Don’t move!” the cop said, and he wet his lips. He wasn’t much older than me, maybe nineteen or twenty, looking kind of silly in his tall brown hat, like a kid playing dress-up. He crouched down, the gun’s muzzle about four inches from Bennacio’s nose, and reached around his back to find the weapon that wasn’t there.

Bennacio’s right hand shot straight up, his index and middle finger extended from his fist, into the kid’s neck. He fell straight down and lay still.

“You killed him,” I said. “Jeez, Bennacio!”

“He is not dead,” Bennacio said. “Come, Alfred.”

He was already on his feet and walking rapidly toward the patrol car.

“We’re taking his car?”

“Yes.”

“Because we’ve got no choice.”

“Yes.”

“I want to go home, Bennacio.”

He turned at the door. “What home, Alfred?”

He wasn’t trying to be mean. He just didn’t know what I meant by “home.” What did I mean by “home”? The Tuttles’? Knoxville? He didn’t know and I sure didn’t know. I had no real home anymore.