As Far as the Sky, part 5
May. 31st, 2008 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamcranverPart 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Ben ripped off his tie as soon as he got into the taxi. He hated those things—always made his neck sweat. “28th and Wake Street, please,” he said to the driver. As they drove, he took off his coat and unbuttoned the top of his shirt. It wasn’t like he wasn’t used to heat, but Christ, the humidity in this city would choke an elephant.
The headquarters at 28th and Wake looked pretty much like any one of a number of featureless brick office buildings in the area. Agent Folds had taken the time to plant some flowers in the window planters, which Ben thought was a nice touch, but that was it.
Of course, on the inside, you had to go through all sorts of security once you got past the receptionists. He waved at them as he walked through to the identification scanners, but they ignored him, as usual. At least the building was air-conditioned, he thought. A place couldn’t really be hell with central air conditioning, no matter what that demon in Dogma thought.
Special Agent Carter was standing in the middle of the cubicles by Agent Kweller’s desk going through a file folder. Ben debated hiding behind the corner and paging him, but sooner or later Carter would find out that he’d been trying to avoid walking up to him, and then he’d be in for another disdainful look, which, coming from Carter, somehow hurt more than any of the stupid remarks from his other coworkers. Ben took a deep breath and went to say hello.
Ben was thirty years old, and Agent Carter couldn’t have possibly been more than ten or so years older, but all the same, he wanted to be Carter when he grew up. The man practically oozed confidence, competence, a certain savoir faire. He took no bullshit from anyone. Someday Ben hoped that he, too, would be in a position where his aura of authority and knowledge prevented him from having to take any bullshit. Of course, he was probably years away from that. As far as everyone in the office was concerned, Ben was just the weird hippie Australian guy. Ben didn’t mind being the weird hippie Australian guy, but he would have killed for a little of Special Agent Carter’s confidence.
Carter put down the folder as Ben approached. “Lee,” he said. “How’d your first undercover op go? Did Wentz suspect anything?”
“I don’t think so,” Ben said. “The cover story worked like a charm.”
Carter nodded. “Good.” He jerked his head towards the hallway where the real offices were, and said, “Wanna take this to my office?”
Carter’s office was nice. Ben took a moment to look around at the bookshelves (real wood!) and the desk chair (real leather!) before turning his attention back to Carter, who was doing something on his computer. “Well?” Carter said impatiently.
“As far as I can tell, everything’s on the level. There were no bribes, no insider information, nothing off the sort—at that meeting, anyway. I suppose he might have more private meetings for that sort of thing, but I think it’s too early to tell, really.”
Carter sighed and typed something. “You might be right,” he said, “but God knows Wentz is up to something. I know he’s got his fingers in a lot of pies, but this latest hot streak he’s got is suspicious even for him. Lee.” He looked up and fixed Ben with a serious look, and Ben felt himself straighten up without even meaning to, feeling shabbily under-dressed with his missing tie and unbuttoned collar. “Did you see anything out of the ordinary? Anything at all. The smallest detail could be important.”
“Well….” Ben hesitated to mention it, it seemed so ridiculous, but as long as Carter was asking, it couldn’t hurt. “There was something a bit odd. There were two kids in the room—apparently, Wentz’s P.A. took them in or adopted them or something—and I know this sounds stupid, but it’s almost as if Wentz was taking advice from the kids.”
“Advice?” Carter said, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, you know. He’d be about to make a decision about buying a company out or something, and he’d turn around, and the kids would say something, or nod, or gesture, or whatever.” Ben shrugged. It wasn’t as if he suspected a couple of pre-teen boys of insider trading, but he couldn’t help how it had looked.
Carter leaned back in his comfortable-looking desk chair and frowned. “What are you telling me, Lee?”
“Nothing, I suppose. Unless the kids are secretly cutthroat businessmen, or psychic or something, I don’t see how they could possibly be affecting Wentz’s business success.”
“Psychic?” Carter sat up abruptly.
Oh, hell no. Ben knew he had a reputation for being a bit of a New Age guy, but Carter couldn’t possibly think he was suggesting that Pete Wentz was using psychic powers to get ahead. “It was just a joke, sir,” he said.
“Maybe to you.” Carter typed something furiously, frowned at his computer screen, and then folded his hands together on his desk. “Shut the door and sit down.”
Ben obeyed, completely confused. Carter leaned forward with an intense expression on his face. “Before I moved to Corporate Fraud two years ago, you know where I worked?”
Ben shook his head. He’d only been in the States a year, and it wasn’t like people were dying to fill him in on office gossip.
“Now, Lee, this is strictly classified, so I don’t want to hear that you’ve been spreading this around the office.” Carter waited for Ben’s nod before he continued. “Well, a lot of people don’t know this, but the FBI has a division for Paranormal and Extraterrestrial Phenomena.”
What? “Like the X-Files?” Ben blurted out.
Carter chuckled drily. “Something like that. Now, as you can imagine, the field work in that department is 99% bullshit. But every now and then, you get something real.” He looked Ben over appraisingly, and said, “You know Area 51?”
“You’re not gonna tell me it’s real, are you?” Ben wondered a bit hysterically if this was a practical joke. If it was, Carter had a hell of a poker face.
“No, I’m not gonna tell you that,” said Carter. “But I am gonna tell you that alien spacecraft have landed on American soil, on more than one occasion. And I am gonna tell you that we have genuine cases of criminals, domestic and otherwise, making use of ghosts and magic and psychic powers and all that shit to do everything from steal candy to smuggle nuclear weapons.”
“And you think Pete Wentz is using a couple of psychic kids to increase his profit margin this year?” It was almost too ridiculous to contemplate, but Carter looked deadly serious, and God knew the man had seen a lot of shit in his tenure at the FBI. Even Ben knew that.
Carter shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s not my department anymore. But the circumstances of how those kids came to be living with Pete Wentz are pretty damn odd. Wentz made a charitable donation—and I’m talking a lot of money—to the Smith Children’s home a week before Patrick Stump signed the custody papers. And Stump requested those two kids, Gerard and Mikey Minnelli, specifically.”
“Maybe they hit it off,” Ben offered. “You know, sometimes people just click.”
Carter gave him a withering look. “I’m not talking about any goddamned parent-child bond between Stump and these kids. I’m talking about Pete Wentz using his money to get Stump approved as a foster parent faster than ought to be legally possible. There was clearly something about those kids that Wentz fucking wanted.” Carter pulled a plain business card out of his desk and handed it to Ben.
Maja Ivarsson, FBI was all it said, with a number and an e-mail address underneath. Ben stared at it for a while, though, as if something on it would make any of this make sense.
“Now, I’ve worked with Ivarsson before,” Carter said. “I want you to call her office and set up an appointment, and then you tell her everything you can remember about these kids. And when you talk to her, tell her Shawn says hey.” With that, Carter went back to going through the file he’d been looking at earlier. Ben figured that was his cue to leave, and he stood up, grabbing his tie and stuffing it in his pocket. As he opened the door, Carter said, “Hey, Lee. Good job on this.”
There wasn’t any real reason for Ben to feel giddy as a schoolboy just because his boss gave him a compliment, but, Ben figured, there wasn’t any reason for him not to.
Getting an appointment with Maja Ivarsson was like getting an appointment with the Pope—or at least, like Ben imagined getting an appointment with the Pope would be. It was a week before her office even called him back, another before he could get in, with nothing but mountains of fucking paperwork to do in the meanwhile.
When the day of his appointment finally came around, though, it was a bit like Christmas. Ben could barely stop himself from shouting, “Area 51’s a fake, and I know it because I’ve got an appointment with the Aliens and Psychics division of the FBI!” as he walked down the street. This was the kind of shit people back home had teased him about when they found out that he was moving to America and becoming a federal agent, the kind of Al Capone, JFK assassination mystery stuff that Ben had given up on ever being included in.
The offices for the Division for Paranormal and Extraterrestrial Phenomena were located in a depressingly boring little white stucco building (although Christ, the security was really something). As Ben waited for the receptionist to lead him to Ivarsson’s office, he looked around. There were taupe walls with generic pictures, greyish carpet, piles of Time and People magazines on the press-board end tables. Who’d have thought that this was where people investigated some of the greatest mysteries to ever plague mankind?
“Right this way, Agent Lee,” said the bored-sounding receptionist.
Ivarsson’s office was at the end of a well-lit, almost cozy hallway. The receptionist left without announcing him, and Ben hovered outside the doorway for a moment before raising his hand to knock.
“Come in,” said an accented voice.
A lovely blonde woman was sitting behind the desk, and another woman and a man, both dark-haired were sitting with bored expressions against the wall. “You must be Agent Lee,” said the blonde woman. She had a vaguely Scandinavian accent, Ben decided, and he felt oddly pleased to meet another non-American in the Bureau.
“Yeah, I am,” he said, holding out his hand. “Are you Maja Ivarsson?”
“Yes,” she said, and she shook his hand with a rather cat-like smile. She gestured with her other hand towards the man and woman by the wall, who as yet remained silent. “These are Agents Palmer and Viglione.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Ben. Agent Palmer—or possibly Viglione—well, the woman raised her eyebrow. The man sighed. Ben decided not to take it personally—Special Agent Carter aside, it probably took an odd sort of person to work in this particular division.
“Well, shall we get down to business?” said Ms. Ivarsson, sitting down again. “Agent Lee, I want you to tell me absolutely everything about these children you saw at Mr. Wentz’s meeting.” Seeing Ben’s surprised look, she smiled again. “Special Agent Carter sent me most of the pertinent information. From you, I want only the most specific physical details of the actual event.”
“All right,” said Ben, and he tried to describe them as best he could, considering it had been two weeks ago and he hadn’t exactly been devoting all of his attention to the kids.
He felt terribly inadequate, and the disdainful looks from Palmer and Viglione didn’t help much, but when he was finished, Ms. Ivarsson said, “Thank you very much. You have been very helpful.”
Ben waited, but apparently nothing more was forthcoming. He couldn’t really blame them for being reticent or busy, but he was still disappointed not to know whether or not he’d really helped them in their investigation, and if so, what kind of investigation it was. He stood up with a sigh. “Well. Nice you meet you, Ms. Ivarsson,” he said. He was about to turn to leave, but…after all, it wasn’t as if he was about to get another invite back to this place anytime soon. “Can you tell me…are those kids really….”
“Are they really what, Agent Lee?” asked Ms. Ivarsson with a frown.
“Are they really psychic?”
Agent Palmer laughed, and Ms. Ivarsson’s frown relaxed into an easy, confident grin. “I believe they are, Agent Lee,” she said. “I believe they are also probably aliens.”
Ben’s afternoon meetings were excruciatingly boring, nothing but facts and figures about the cash flow from Pete Wentz’s various bank accounts. He spent the whole day thinking about aliens, Ms. Ivarsson’s words repeating on an endless loop in his head.
**
Agent Viglione frowned at the blueprints in front of him. “Is there a back door into this wing?”
Agent Palmer stubbed out her cigarette and pointed. “There,” she said. “That hallway in the back’s been remodeled, though.”
“Right,” said Agent Viglione with a nod. “Christ, how much money you think Wentz makes?”
“I believe the technical term is ‘shitloads.’” She leaned over the table, tracing a finger thoughtfully along the floor plan. “There’ll only be one or two guards on duty,” she said. “And I’ve got Katie on the security system.”
He smiled. “Good,” he said, and then he added, “You really think Wentz’ll fight us on this?” His tone was casual, but the thread of eager interest underneath was obvious to anyone who knew him.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said with a shrug. “All alien life forms are property of the United States Government. You sure as hell can’t adopt them, not even if you’re Pete Wentz’s personal assistant.”
**
It’s another stuffy night, hot even at two in the fucking morning, and his shirt is sticking uncomfortably to his back. The back door pushes open easily, though, and the air conditioning inside is like walking suddenly into a refrigerator, chilling the sweat and drenching him in cold clamminess. He looks around the luxurious living room. The hallway should be past the kitchen—even though the hallway itself has been rearranged, it’s still in the same place, and he walks quietly through a messy breakfast nook.
“Hey!”
Shit. He stops in his tracks and sneaks a glance over his shoulder. It’s Wentz’s head of security—Trohman, he remembers.
“What the hell are you doing?” says Trohman. “No, wait, don’t answer that. Get on the floor right the fuck now. And I have a gun, so don’t try anything funny.”
“All right,” he says. “Okay, just don’t….” He can’t even decide what he wants to say. Don’t worry? Don’t do anything stupid? Don’t make me laugh? No time for witty rejoinders, though, and before Trohman can get impatient, he reaches into his holster. The gun’s out in a flash, and before Trohman can say anything, it’s firing.
The silencer muffles the shot, softens it into a low hiss, but just in case, he stands still for a moment to listen for movement within the house. Nothing. He turns down into the small corridor past the master bedroom, leaving Trohman to bleed out on the carpet.
At first Mikey didn’t realize it had been a dream. He woke up in his bed, soaked in sweat, with his whole body trembling and his stomach wracked with dread. GERARD! he yelled, putting the whole force of his mind behind it. Bunny, blinking irately at him from the other pillow, asked him what was wrong. He ignored her and yelled for his brother again.
It was just a dream, he told himself. Joe wasn’t really dead, and there wasn’t really a guy in the house sneaking towards his room. Just a dream. The frantic terror seeped out of his mind, but the cold sick feeling in his stomach didn’t.
Gerard appeared at the doorway, rubbing at his eyes. “What is it, Mikey?” he asked through a yawn. “Bad dream?”
Gerard, we have to go. We have to go NOW. Mikey still wanted to puke, but he forced himself out of his bed and ducked under it to pull out his suitcase. They could still stop it. They could. He wouldn’t have dreamed it if they couldn’t do anything about it, right?
“Wait,” said Gerard. “What? Why? Where do we have to go?”
Why couldn’t Gerard have just dreamed the same thing, the way he sometimes did, so Mikey wouldn’t have to try to explain? He tried to force the whole horror of the thing into compact images and send them to Gerard, hoping it would be enough, and Gerard would start moving.
“Wait, wait, wait.” Gerard clutched at his head with one hand and reached out for Mikey with the other. “I can’t—it’s too much, Mikey. Slow down. I’m getting…some guy in the house? With a gun?”
And he shoots Joe! Mikey pulled away from Gerard and went over to pull a handful of underwear out of his dresser drawer. He’s gonna shoot Joe because he’s breaking in here to look for us, but if we aren’t here, maybe he won’t come. And we gotta warn Joe, we gotta tell him— He broke off and tried to gather his scattered thoughts.
Gerard’s eyes were huge. “What?” he said. “Who is this guy? Why’s he looking for us? Why does he shoot Joe?”
Mikey took a deep breath. I don’t know, he said. But he was looking for us because that Ben Lee guy told him about us. He glanced at the digital clock on his dresser. It was 2:45, and Joe was still alive, watching the South Park movie on his iPod--Mikey could hear him if he focused his mind and listened. The guy wasn’t coming tonight.
“I don’t understand,” said Gerard. “What, is it like a business thing, where, like, we’re helping Pete, so he wants to kidnap us so we can help him? Or is it the government or something?”
They were wasting way too much time. Does it matter? Mikey asked, going to the closet to pull out his favorite tee-shirts. They’d have to travel light, so he couldn’t take all of them.
“I guess not,” Gerard muttered. “Okay. We leave, the guy doesn’t come and shoot Joe. I’m with you. But if his whole point is to get us, won’t he follow us if we leave now? Can’t we wait until morning and get Pete to, like, fly us to Hawaii or something?”
That made sense. But it didn’t feel right. Mikey cast his mind back to the dream. He’d been totally confident in the dream. Nobody could stop him from getting what he’d come for, and he didn’t care what he had to do to get it. He’ll kill Pete, too, he said. Something occurred to him, and he added, I think there’s more than one of them. You don’t get it, Gee, they’ll do anything to get us. It’s like you said before, Pete and Patrick and Andy and Joe can’t stop it. It wouldn’t do anything--we’d just be putting them in danger, and superheroes don’t do that.
He knew he’d gotten Gerard with the superhero thing. Gerard took that stuff really seriously. “Okay, yeah,” he said finally. “We can go to that place on the starcase map. It’s out in the middle of nowhere—whoever this guy is, he’s not gonna look for us there. But how are we gonna get there?”
We could call a cab, Mikey suggested.
Gerard shook his head. “No cab’s gonna pick up two kids at a quarter to three in the morning. And we’re not gonna get anywhere walking. I mean, it’s like two hundred miles to Cork Valley.”
I don’t know, Gerard! Mikey could feel his eyes burning, but he closed his eyes before tears could fall. He wasn’t a baby, and this wasn’t the time for crying. I just know we gotta go before this guy comes and just, just takes us, okay, so we have to think of something!
Gerard brought his hand to his mouth and started biting at the skin around his fingernails, a bad habit Mama’d always scolded him about, staring at Mikey with serious eyes. For the first time in a long time, Mikey couldn’t tell what his brother was thinking. “I think I maybe have an idea,” Gerard said slowly. “I mean, God, this is so stupid, because I’m the worst horseback rider ever, but….”
Snowball? Mikey hadn’t even considered that possibility, but Snowball was a pretty fast horse. Still….Snowball can’t run two hundred miles, he said. That’d kill him.
“Yeah, I know,” said Gerard, nodding. “But he could probably get us back to the Smith Home. Because I was thinking, you know who’d be really good at running away? Frank. Doesn’t he seem like somebody who’d be really good at this stuff?”
You think Frank can help us get to Cork Valley? Mikey was kind of dubious. Frank was a year younger than Mikey, even, and he sucked at keeping quiet and under the radar. Then again, though, he was super tough, and it’d be awesome to see him again. Mikey looked regretfully at the guitar Patrick had given him, leaning sadly against the wall in his closet. It sucked that he couldn’t take it with him. Frank would have loved it.
Gerard nodded. “Why not? Lemme go get some stuff, and we can go.” He turned to leave, but before he got to the doorway, he turned around and gave Mikey another serious look. “This is crazy. You know that, right?” He shook his head. “Assassins after us, and running away on horseback—totally crazy.”
Mikey didn’t say anything. It wasn’t like their lives had been that normal to begin with.
He finished packing. It didn’t take that long, really. Pete and Patrick had given him a lot of stuff, but none of it felt like his, so it wasn’t hard to pick out his worn jeans and old tee-shirts and leave just about everything else behind. He took the iPod, though. He hoped Pete wasn’t pissed. But he’d gotten it up past 5,000 songs, and who knew when and where he’d ever have access to that much music again.
Bunny made a small, uncertain-sounding noise from the bed. Surely Mikey wasn’t going to leave her behind?
Mikey stuffed his starcase into his front backpack pocket and scooped up Bunny into his arms. Of course not, he said. Bunny grumbled, said he wasn’t holding her back side up enough, but her rumbly little purr gave her away.
Gerard poked his head in. “Hey, you ready?” he said in a whisper. Mikey didn’t know why he was whispering now; he hadn’t seemed to be worried about being heard during their earlier conversation.
Just about, Mikey said. He looked around his room, the room Pete and Patrick had picked out and furnished just for him. The urgency of his fear had gone, leaving only sadness behind, and he said, Hey, you have a piece of paper?
“Sure,” said Gerard, pulling his sketchpad out of his backpack and tearing off a sheet. “Why?”
I wanna leave a note. He dug a pencil out of his pocket. “Dear Patrick and Pete and Andy and Joe,” he wrote. After a moment’s thought, he added, “and Dirty. I’m sorry we’re running away, and I hope you don’t worry. But there are bad guys after us and we didn’t want you to get hurt. Thank you for the iPod and the rooms. You guys are awesome. Love, Mikey and Gerard.” He passed it over to Gerard. Is that okay?
Gerard bit his lower lip as he read, and his eyes got suspiciously wet. “Yeah,” he said thickly. He ducked his head so his hair hid his eyes—as if Mikey didn’t know he was tearing up—and pulled a crumpled-up wad of paper out of his pocket. “MapQuest directions,” he explained, though Mikey hadn’t asked.
It wasn’t hard to sneak out. They just walked past Patrick’s bedroom into the living room. Gerard left the note on the coffee table while Mikey opened the patio door. The security system was the easiest thing in the world to turn off. Mikey just had to concentrate on it for a minute, and then they were out on the patio. It was actually kind of chilly, which made Mikey feel strangely better about things. It had been hot in his dream.
Snowball was asleep when they walked out to his shed. Mikey felt kind of bad about waking him, but he was pretty sure Snowball would agree that this was an emergency. Snowball, he said, I need a favor.
Snowball was pretty pissed off about being woken up, but when Mikey told him about the people after them and Joe getting shot and stuff, he got how serious it was. Or, well, he asked why they thought he cared about any of the stupid humans at stupid Decaydance, but he let them both onto his back, without even snorting or threatening to bite Gerard too much.
It felt weird, riding off into the dark night, Snowball’s hooves clacking on the pavement while Gerard clung for dear life to Mikey’s back. Weird, and a little bit dangerous. But it also felt right in a way that nothing had for months, and Mikey couldn’t stop himself from smiling a little. It wasn’t like anyone could see him.
**
Frank didn’t believe his eyes when he woke up at some ungodly hour of the morning, like, five or six or something, to see the Minnelli brothers hovering over his bed. This had to be another weird-ass dream, because what the hell would they be doing in his room this early?
“Hey, Frank,” Gerard whispered, smiling in a way that didn’t look like a smile at all and darting his eyes over to where Bill and Adam were asleep in their bunks.
“Mrgh,” said Frank. Because there was no way this wasn’t a dream—he totally felt asleep.
Mikey stared at him solemnly, Bunny curled up against his chest and peering at Frank with big reflective eyes. “Frank,” he said quietly, “you gotta wake up. We need your help.”
Frank rubbed a little grit out of his eyes and blinked at them, and then he looked around the room. His room seemed the same as always, from the Henry Rollins poster over the desk to the pile of dirty laundry in front of the closet to the soft sound of the Butcher snoring from the top bunk, all of it way too detailed for a dream. Some of the sleep-fuzziness cleared from his mind, and it hit him—this was real, and Gerard and Mikey were totally hanging out in his room.
“Oh, man! You guys!” He forgot to whisper, and they winced.
“Shh,” said Gerard.
“Sorry,” said Frank, lowering his voice. “God, you have no idea how glad I am to see you. It’s been so boring since you left. Jamia got sent to live with, like, this doctor and his wife, and Bill shoplifted a Playboy from the gas station and now all he and Adam and the Butcher do is, like, jerk off all the time, which is totally lame.” He grinned at them, because there were lots of things you could say about the Minnelli brothers, but you could never say they were boring. “What are you guys doing here, anyway?” He asked.
Gerard fidgeted with the cuffs of his hoody uncomfortably. “Um. We’re sort of running away.”
Frank jerked up straight in his bed. In his experience, kids ran away from foster homes all the time. Sometimes for better reasons than others—Frank remembered running away a couple years back because he had to share a room with an annoying little kid who watched professional wrestling videos all the time. But he knew kids who’d run away for other, scarier reasons, and he had a sneaking suspicion that Gerard and Mikey weren’t the type to run unless it was important. “Did those rich guys do something? Did they hit you?” Because if they had, all the money in the world wouldn’t save them from Frank Iero kicking their asses.
Gerard shook his head. “No. Patrick and Pete were cool. But….” He shot a look over at his brother, and they did their weird psychic message exchange thing before Gerard turned back to Frank. “This guy found out about us, and then Mikey had a dream that somebody was gonna come kidnap us, and he had a gun—the guy in the dream, not Mikey—and he was gonna kill anybody who got in his way. And I don’t know what he was gonna do with us, but it wasn’t good.”
Jesus Christ. Frank looked from Gerard to Mikey and back again. He didn’t think they’d make up this kind of stuff, but maybe they’d misunderstood something and were getting freaked out for nothing. It sounded kind of…out there. On the other hand, they were…whatever it was they were, superheroes or mutants or aliens or whatever, and Frank had seen enough movies to know that the government and other assorted bad guys were always interested in using super powers for their own twisted ends.
“What do you need me to do?” Frank asked. Because that had to be why they’d come. Two months of friendship with Mikey and Gerard had taught him that they knew a lot about music and horror movies and books, but not a whole lot about stuff like feeding or defending themselves. Frank actually felt a little honored that he was the guy they’d come to for stuff like that—not just anybody could say they were a mentor to a pair of superheroes.
Mikey shrugged a little with one shoulder. “We thought maybe you’d wanna come, too.”
Frank was so overwhelmed by the thought for a second that he couldn’t even talk. “Oh, shit,” he finally managed. “That would be so fucking awesome!”
“Yeah?” Gerard smiled again, hesitant but real this time. “You sure? ’Cause I mean, it’s probably gonna be super dangerous and stuff, and we’re going to this total nowhere on the starcase map to hide out, and it’s pretty cool here, and….”
“Dude, shut up,” said Frank, but not meanly, because he wasn’t pissed or anything. “I’m totally going with you.” This was seriously the most exciting thing that had happened to Frank in forever, like suddenly life had dropped him in the middle of a Bruce Willis movie. And sure, the Smith Home was awesome for a group home, and Spencer and Brendon and Jon and Ryan were all super nice, but living there wasn’t like helping Gerard and Mikey because they were on the run from a killer who wanted to kidnap them because they had psychic powers. Plus, Frank was a pain in the ass—he was an honest kind of guy, he could admit it—so he’d probably be making everyone’s life at the Home a lot easier if he left.
And then Mikey smiled at him with his big goofy toothy smile, and then Gerard smiled at him with his big goofy toothy smile, and Frank was more sure than ever that he was making the right decision.
He got out of bed to go over to the dresser and get his stuff together. He didn’t have much, just some old clothes and a few books and…oh, shit. “I can’t take my guitar on the run, can I?” he said.
“Well,” said Gerard, scrunching up his face on one side, “I dunno.”
Shit, shit, shit. Frank bent down to dig it out from under his bed and ran his hand over the worn leather case. It wasn’t like a rock star guitar, he knew, and it wasn’t even in good shape, and who took a guitar on the run with them? You couldn’t run with a guitar, and it took up space in a car if you hitchhiked. It wasn’t even like his case had a shoulder strap. But it was his grandpa’s.
“You should take it,” said Mikey. Frank and Gerard both looked at him, and he stared back earnestly. “I still have some room in my backpack,” he said, “so you could stuff some of your stuff in there, and maybe put some of it in Gerard’s, so then you wouldn’t have to take your backpack and you could take your guitar instead.”
“What about food?” asked Frank, not willing to get his hopes up yet. “You got room for food?”
Mikey shrugged. “Not really,” he said, “but I have some money, so we could buy stuff.”
It was a dumbass idea, Frank knew. But he fucking loved that guitar. And it wasn’t like he couldn’t ditch it later, if it was slowing them down.
He ducked into the bathroom to change out of his pajamas and grab his toothbrush, and Mikey and Gerard were waiting for him when he got out. “We gotta go,” said Gerard nervously. “It’s gonna be light soon.” He frowned as if remembering something and added, “Shouldn’t you leave a note or something? So Spencer and Brendon and Jon won’t worry?”
Frank rolled his eyes, because Spencer and Brendon and Jon were clearly gonna worry anyway, but he scribbled out something about helping Gerard and Mikey find their family on a piece of paper ripped from his math notebook. “Happy now?” he asked. “We can leave it under Spencer’s office door when we go downstairs.”
“Okay,” said Gerard, looking relieved.
Sneaking down the stairs quietly wasn’t easy, but Frank had actually gotten some experience doing it over the eight months he’d been living at the Home, for night games of Capture the Flag and stuff, and Gerard and Mikey were surprisingly good at creeping quietly through the creaky old house.
When they got past Spencer’s office, down to the front door, there was an honest-to-God horse waiting for them by the porch. “Holy shit,” said Frank, unable to believe his eyes, “did you guys actually ride a horse over here?”
Mikey smiled. “Snowball,” he said, as if that explained everything. He did his mind-meld thing with the horse for a moment and then frowned. “He’s tired and thirsty,” he said, “And there’s no way he can carry all three of us.”
Frank couldn’t help but be a little disappointed; he’d never ridden a horse before. But Gerard seemed to take it pretty well. “We were gonna have to leave him anyway,” he said with a shrug. “We’re going too far.”
“So where is this place, anyway?” Frank hadn’t had much luck searching for the places on Mikey’s starcase after the Minnellis left, not least because he couldn’t remember what they were called.
“It’s, like, 200 miles away,” said Gerard.
“Jesus.” Well, there was no way they could walk, then, especially if hitmen were after them. And it was almost sunrise, so they were gonna have to haul some ass if they wanted to make it to the highway to hitchhike before Spencer woke up. “Let’s go to the gas station on 4th Street,” he said. A lot of truckers went through there to refill their tanks and get coffee, and maybe they could get a ride with one of them.
“Just wait a minute,” said Mikey, walking over to the horse and gazing into its eyes. That damn kid and his animals, thought Frank, and he was no psychic, but it looked like Gerard was thinking the same thing.
“Mikey….” Gerard said nervously.
Mikey sighed loudly. He dropped Bunny on the ground and pulled a water bottle out of his backpack, and then he gave it to the horse to drink while rubbing its nose. Finally, he pulled away, looking sadly at Gerard. “I know. We gotta go. I just had to say goodbye.”
“So wait, we’re just leaving the horse?” Frank said. “Boy, Spencer’s gonna be surprised when he wakes up and finds a horse at his front door.”
Mikey shook his head. “Snowball knows his way home.”
Well, whatever. This wasn’t The Incredible Journey or whatever that movie was, the one with the dogs finding their way home after their family moved without them, this was real life. “Come on, guys,” said Frank. “We gonna run away or not?”
Frank had pretty much figured it was gonna suck getting to the gas station—neither Mikey nor Gerard was exactly next in line for Athlete of the Year or anything. But he was pleasantly surprised. They more or less managed to keep up, and maybe Gerard complained a little bit and Mikey made a lot of faces, but they were still making pretty good time.
It was 8:20 by Frank’s watch by the time they made it to the gas station. There weren’t any big truck rigs yet, but it was still early, and there was a van parked next to the pumps that could be promising. “Guys, guys,” he said, because he was getting super hungry. “Let’s go in and get some snacks, and then we’ll come back out here and try to get a ride.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Gerard. “I’d kill for a Coke right now.” He wiped some sweat off his forehead with a big, dramatic gesture which Mikey immediately copied, and Frank couldn’t help but giggle a little. Their musical theater mom might not have been actually related to them, but she’d definitely managed to pass something on to her sons.
They walked in, ducking around the racks of cigarettes to the aisle with the chips and Hostess pastries. There was a big blond guy at the counter, talking to the gas station guy, but neither of them seemed to notice the three kids. Which was probably for the best, Frank thought, if they were gonna try to be incognito. Green Day was playing over the radio, and it made Frank super glad he’d decided to bring his guitar.
“Oh, man, Twinkies,” Mikey was saying, gazing at the Hostess pastries as if they held the key to ultimate happiness.
Gerard frowned. “I don’t know, Mikey,” he said, “shouldn’t we maybe try to get something healthier, like a sandwich or something?”
“Fuck that,” said Frank, grabbing for a bag of Doritos. “When I Come Around” switched off the radio, and the DJ started talking.
“We should at least get some milk,” said Gerard, but Mikey’s whole body had gone stiff, and Frank suddenly found himself very uninterested in the box of granola bars he’d been contemplating.
“What is it, Mikey?” Frank asked. If Mikey was already getting bad feelings, Frank didn’t have a whole lot of hope for this venture.
Mikey scowled. “Shh! Listen!”
Frank didn’t understand what he was supposed to be listening to, but he obligingly shut his mouth. The blond guy at the counter and the attendant had stopped talking, too, and the DJ’s voice piped through the gas station.
“…according the nice folks at the Smith Home and Mr. Wentz’s representatives, people should be on the lookout for three boys, one about 4 foot 1 with bleached blond hair, one about 4 foot 8 with brown hair and glasses, and one…” Oh, fuck.
“Jesus,” snorted the gas station attendant, “how far could three kids who can’t even drive get?”
“Maybe they called a cab,” said the blond man wryly. “Dude, how much for all this stuff?”
Shit, they had to move fast—once the blond guy was gone, there’d be nothing distracting the gas station attendant from the fact that the three missing kids were hanging out in the back of his store. “Drop the Twinkies, Mikey!” Frank hissed. Mikey obeyed, his eyes huge, and Frank grabbed both him and Gerard by the sleeves and dragged them back around the corner of the aisle, so they could watch for the right moment to duck out.
“Frank,” Mikey whispered. Frank shushed him, but Mikey said, “No, Frank, do we need a distraction?”
Well, a distraction would be pretty fucking handy, but they sure didn’t have time to come up with an elaborate plan right then and there. Frank would have somehow communicated this to Mikey by means of facial expressions and pointed gestures, but Mikey was already letting go of Bunny, who sauntered primly into the middle of the gas station.
“What the--” the attendant said, staring. “Where the hell did that cat come from?” The blond man turned around to look, and Mikey grinned at Frank before slipping out the door.
That kid. Frank followed, Gerard on his heels, and they were out. “Now what?” said Gerard, looking a little frantic.
They didn’t have a lot of options—Bunny wasn’t going to be able to keep those guys distracted long enough to give them time to get to the highway, and now they’d have people looking for them. Frank’s eyes lighted on the van parked by the pumps, and he ran over to test the doors. “Fuck!” he said, frustrated. “They’re locked.”
“That’s not a problem,” said Gerard. “Are we gonna sneak in the back?”
“That’s the plan, yeah,” Frank said, doing his best not to get irritated. He knew Gerard and Mikey had brought him along to be the brains, but Christ, hadn’t they ever seen a movie? “But first we gotta--”
“Try the locks again,” said Mikey.
Frank stared for a moment, then pulled at the back door of the van. It came open easily. Of course, Frank thought. Of course, fucking Mikey Minnelli could open locks with his fucking mind.
Gerard smiled briefly before he twisted his mouth with worry again. “Don’t we have to, you know, hurry?”
Mikey gave Gerard the psychic message look again, and Gerard sighed. A moment later, Bunny came running out of the gas station, jumping into Mikey’s arms, and Frank honestly didn’t know they could move that fast, but in the blink of an eye, they’d pulled him, guitar and all, into the back of the van and Gerard glared at the door fiercely until it closed.
“Christ,” said Frank, amazed at how quickly it had happened. Gerard and Mikey gave him another worried look in unison, like they were acting with one brain, and he grinned so hard he could feel the corners of his mouth ache with it. This was so much better than being in a Bruce Willis movie.
Part 6
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Ben ripped off his tie as soon as he got into the taxi. He hated those things—always made his neck sweat. “28th and Wake Street, please,” he said to the driver. As they drove, he took off his coat and unbuttoned the top of his shirt. It wasn’t like he wasn’t used to heat, but Christ, the humidity in this city would choke an elephant.
The headquarters at 28th and Wake looked pretty much like any one of a number of featureless brick office buildings in the area. Agent Folds had taken the time to plant some flowers in the window planters, which Ben thought was a nice touch, but that was it.
Of course, on the inside, you had to go through all sorts of security once you got past the receptionists. He waved at them as he walked through to the identification scanners, but they ignored him, as usual. At least the building was air-conditioned, he thought. A place couldn’t really be hell with central air conditioning, no matter what that demon in Dogma thought.
Special Agent Carter was standing in the middle of the cubicles by Agent Kweller’s desk going through a file folder. Ben debated hiding behind the corner and paging him, but sooner or later Carter would find out that he’d been trying to avoid walking up to him, and then he’d be in for another disdainful look, which, coming from Carter, somehow hurt more than any of the stupid remarks from his other coworkers. Ben took a deep breath and went to say hello.
Ben was thirty years old, and Agent Carter couldn’t have possibly been more than ten or so years older, but all the same, he wanted to be Carter when he grew up. The man practically oozed confidence, competence, a certain savoir faire. He took no bullshit from anyone. Someday Ben hoped that he, too, would be in a position where his aura of authority and knowledge prevented him from having to take any bullshit. Of course, he was probably years away from that. As far as everyone in the office was concerned, Ben was just the weird hippie Australian guy. Ben didn’t mind being the weird hippie Australian guy, but he would have killed for a little of Special Agent Carter’s confidence.
Carter put down the folder as Ben approached. “Lee,” he said. “How’d your first undercover op go? Did Wentz suspect anything?”
“I don’t think so,” Ben said. “The cover story worked like a charm.”
Carter nodded. “Good.” He jerked his head towards the hallway where the real offices were, and said, “Wanna take this to my office?”
Carter’s office was nice. Ben took a moment to look around at the bookshelves (real wood!) and the desk chair (real leather!) before turning his attention back to Carter, who was doing something on his computer. “Well?” Carter said impatiently.
“As far as I can tell, everything’s on the level. There were no bribes, no insider information, nothing off the sort—at that meeting, anyway. I suppose he might have more private meetings for that sort of thing, but I think it’s too early to tell, really.”
Carter sighed and typed something. “You might be right,” he said, “but God knows Wentz is up to something. I know he’s got his fingers in a lot of pies, but this latest hot streak he’s got is suspicious even for him. Lee.” He looked up and fixed Ben with a serious look, and Ben felt himself straighten up without even meaning to, feeling shabbily under-dressed with his missing tie and unbuttoned collar. “Did you see anything out of the ordinary? Anything at all. The smallest detail could be important.”
“Well….” Ben hesitated to mention it, it seemed so ridiculous, but as long as Carter was asking, it couldn’t hurt. “There was something a bit odd. There were two kids in the room—apparently, Wentz’s P.A. took them in or adopted them or something—and I know this sounds stupid, but it’s almost as if Wentz was taking advice from the kids.”
“Advice?” Carter said, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, you know. He’d be about to make a decision about buying a company out or something, and he’d turn around, and the kids would say something, or nod, or gesture, or whatever.” Ben shrugged. It wasn’t as if he suspected a couple of pre-teen boys of insider trading, but he couldn’t help how it had looked.
Carter leaned back in his comfortable-looking desk chair and frowned. “What are you telling me, Lee?”
“Nothing, I suppose. Unless the kids are secretly cutthroat businessmen, or psychic or something, I don’t see how they could possibly be affecting Wentz’s business success.”
“Psychic?” Carter sat up abruptly.
Oh, hell no. Ben knew he had a reputation for being a bit of a New Age guy, but Carter couldn’t possibly think he was suggesting that Pete Wentz was using psychic powers to get ahead. “It was just a joke, sir,” he said.
“Maybe to you.” Carter typed something furiously, frowned at his computer screen, and then folded his hands together on his desk. “Shut the door and sit down.”
Ben obeyed, completely confused. Carter leaned forward with an intense expression on his face. “Before I moved to Corporate Fraud two years ago, you know where I worked?”
Ben shook his head. He’d only been in the States a year, and it wasn’t like people were dying to fill him in on office gossip.
“Now, Lee, this is strictly classified, so I don’t want to hear that you’ve been spreading this around the office.” Carter waited for Ben’s nod before he continued. “Well, a lot of people don’t know this, but the FBI has a division for Paranormal and Extraterrestrial Phenomena.”
What? “Like the X-Files?” Ben blurted out.
Carter chuckled drily. “Something like that. Now, as you can imagine, the field work in that department is 99% bullshit. But every now and then, you get something real.” He looked Ben over appraisingly, and said, “You know Area 51?”
“You’re not gonna tell me it’s real, are you?” Ben wondered a bit hysterically if this was a practical joke. If it was, Carter had a hell of a poker face.
“No, I’m not gonna tell you that,” said Carter. “But I am gonna tell you that alien spacecraft have landed on American soil, on more than one occasion. And I am gonna tell you that we have genuine cases of criminals, domestic and otherwise, making use of ghosts and magic and psychic powers and all that shit to do everything from steal candy to smuggle nuclear weapons.”
“And you think Pete Wentz is using a couple of psychic kids to increase his profit margin this year?” It was almost too ridiculous to contemplate, but Carter looked deadly serious, and God knew the man had seen a lot of shit in his tenure at the FBI. Even Ben knew that.
Carter shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s not my department anymore. But the circumstances of how those kids came to be living with Pete Wentz are pretty damn odd. Wentz made a charitable donation—and I’m talking a lot of money—to the Smith Children’s home a week before Patrick Stump signed the custody papers. And Stump requested those two kids, Gerard and Mikey Minnelli, specifically.”
“Maybe they hit it off,” Ben offered. “You know, sometimes people just click.”
Carter gave him a withering look. “I’m not talking about any goddamned parent-child bond between Stump and these kids. I’m talking about Pete Wentz using his money to get Stump approved as a foster parent faster than ought to be legally possible. There was clearly something about those kids that Wentz fucking wanted.” Carter pulled a plain business card out of his desk and handed it to Ben.
Maja Ivarsson, FBI was all it said, with a number and an e-mail address underneath. Ben stared at it for a while, though, as if something on it would make any of this make sense.
“Now, I’ve worked with Ivarsson before,” Carter said. “I want you to call her office and set up an appointment, and then you tell her everything you can remember about these kids. And when you talk to her, tell her Shawn says hey.” With that, Carter went back to going through the file he’d been looking at earlier. Ben figured that was his cue to leave, and he stood up, grabbing his tie and stuffing it in his pocket. As he opened the door, Carter said, “Hey, Lee. Good job on this.”
There wasn’t any real reason for Ben to feel giddy as a schoolboy just because his boss gave him a compliment, but, Ben figured, there wasn’t any reason for him not to.
Getting an appointment with Maja Ivarsson was like getting an appointment with the Pope—or at least, like Ben imagined getting an appointment with the Pope would be. It was a week before her office even called him back, another before he could get in, with nothing but mountains of fucking paperwork to do in the meanwhile.
When the day of his appointment finally came around, though, it was a bit like Christmas. Ben could barely stop himself from shouting, “Area 51’s a fake, and I know it because I’ve got an appointment with the Aliens and Psychics division of the FBI!” as he walked down the street. This was the kind of shit people back home had teased him about when they found out that he was moving to America and becoming a federal agent, the kind of Al Capone, JFK assassination mystery stuff that Ben had given up on ever being included in.
The offices for the Division for Paranormal and Extraterrestrial Phenomena were located in a depressingly boring little white stucco building (although Christ, the security was really something). As Ben waited for the receptionist to lead him to Ivarsson’s office, he looked around. There were taupe walls with generic pictures, greyish carpet, piles of Time and People magazines on the press-board end tables. Who’d have thought that this was where people investigated some of the greatest mysteries to ever plague mankind?
“Right this way, Agent Lee,” said the bored-sounding receptionist.
Ivarsson’s office was at the end of a well-lit, almost cozy hallway. The receptionist left without announcing him, and Ben hovered outside the doorway for a moment before raising his hand to knock.
“Come in,” said an accented voice.
A lovely blonde woman was sitting behind the desk, and another woman and a man, both dark-haired were sitting with bored expressions against the wall. “You must be Agent Lee,” said the blonde woman. She had a vaguely Scandinavian accent, Ben decided, and he felt oddly pleased to meet another non-American in the Bureau.
“Yeah, I am,” he said, holding out his hand. “Are you Maja Ivarsson?”
“Yes,” she said, and she shook his hand with a rather cat-like smile. She gestured with her other hand towards the man and woman by the wall, who as yet remained silent. “These are Agents Palmer and Viglione.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Ben. Agent Palmer—or possibly Viglione—well, the woman raised her eyebrow. The man sighed. Ben decided not to take it personally—Special Agent Carter aside, it probably took an odd sort of person to work in this particular division.
“Well, shall we get down to business?” said Ms. Ivarsson, sitting down again. “Agent Lee, I want you to tell me absolutely everything about these children you saw at Mr. Wentz’s meeting.” Seeing Ben’s surprised look, she smiled again. “Special Agent Carter sent me most of the pertinent information. From you, I want only the most specific physical details of the actual event.”
“All right,” said Ben, and he tried to describe them as best he could, considering it had been two weeks ago and he hadn’t exactly been devoting all of his attention to the kids.
He felt terribly inadequate, and the disdainful looks from Palmer and Viglione didn’t help much, but when he was finished, Ms. Ivarsson said, “Thank you very much. You have been very helpful.”
Ben waited, but apparently nothing more was forthcoming. He couldn’t really blame them for being reticent or busy, but he was still disappointed not to know whether or not he’d really helped them in their investigation, and if so, what kind of investigation it was. He stood up with a sigh. “Well. Nice you meet you, Ms. Ivarsson,” he said. He was about to turn to leave, but…after all, it wasn’t as if he was about to get another invite back to this place anytime soon. “Can you tell me…are those kids really….”
“Are they really what, Agent Lee?” asked Ms. Ivarsson with a frown.
“Are they really psychic?”
Agent Palmer laughed, and Ms. Ivarsson’s frown relaxed into an easy, confident grin. “I believe they are, Agent Lee,” she said. “I believe they are also probably aliens.”
Ben’s afternoon meetings were excruciatingly boring, nothing but facts and figures about the cash flow from Pete Wentz’s various bank accounts. He spent the whole day thinking about aliens, Ms. Ivarsson’s words repeating on an endless loop in his head.
**
Agent Viglione frowned at the blueprints in front of him. “Is there a back door into this wing?”
Agent Palmer stubbed out her cigarette and pointed. “There,” she said. “That hallway in the back’s been remodeled, though.”
“Right,” said Agent Viglione with a nod. “Christ, how much money you think Wentz makes?”
“I believe the technical term is ‘shitloads.’” She leaned over the table, tracing a finger thoughtfully along the floor plan. “There’ll only be one or two guards on duty,” she said. “And I’ve got Katie on the security system.”
He smiled. “Good,” he said, and then he added, “You really think Wentz’ll fight us on this?” His tone was casual, but the thread of eager interest underneath was obvious to anyone who knew him.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said with a shrug. “All alien life forms are property of the United States Government. You sure as hell can’t adopt them, not even if you’re Pete Wentz’s personal assistant.”
**
It’s another stuffy night, hot even at two in the fucking morning, and his shirt is sticking uncomfortably to his back. The back door pushes open easily, though, and the air conditioning inside is like walking suddenly into a refrigerator, chilling the sweat and drenching him in cold clamminess. He looks around the luxurious living room. The hallway should be past the kitchen—even though the hallway itself has been rearranged, it’s still in the same place, and he walks quietly through a messy breakfast nook.
“Hey!”
Shit. He stops in his tracks and sneaks a glance over his shoulder. It’s Wentz’s head of security—Trohman, he remembers.
“What the hell are you doing?” says Trohman. “No, wait, don’t answer that. Get on the floor right the fuck now. And I have a gun, so don’t try anything funny.”
“All right,” he says. “Okay, just don’t….” He can’t even decide what he wants to say. Don’t worry? Don’t do anything stupid? Don’t make me laugh? No time for witty rejoinders, though, and before Trohman can get impatient, he reaches into his holster. The gun’s out in a flash, and before Trohman can say anything, it’s firing.
The silencer muffles the shot, softens it into a low hiss, but just in case, he stands still for a moment to listen for movement within the house. Nothing. He turns down into the small corridor past the master bedroom, leaving Trohman to bleed out on the carpet.
At first Mikey didn’t realize it had been a dream. He woke up in his bed, soaked in sweat, with his whole body trembling and his stomach wracked with dread. GERARD! he yelled, putting the whole force of his mind behind it. Bunny, blinking irately at him from the other pillow, asked him what was wrong. He ignored her and yelled for his brother again.
It was just a dream, he told himself. Joe wasn’t really dead, and there wasn’t really a guy in the house sneaking towards his room. Just a dream. The frantic terror seeped out of his mind, but the cold sick feeling in his stomach didn’t.
Gerard appeared at the doorway, rubbing at his eyes. “What is it, Mikey?” he asked through a yawn. “Bad dream?”
Gerard, we have to go. We have to go NOW. Mikey still wanted to puke, but he forced himself out of his bed and ducked under it to pull out his suitcase. They could still stop it. They could. He wouldn’t have dreamed it if they couldn’t do anything about it, right?
“Wait,” said Gerard. “What? Why? Where do we have to go?”
Why couldn’t Gerard have just dreamed the same thing, the way he sometimes did, so Mikey wouldn’t have to try to explain? He tried to force the whole horror of the thing into compact images and send them to Gerard, hoping it would be enough, and Gerard would start moving.
“Wait, wait, wait.” Gerard clutched at his head with one hand and reached out for Mikey with the other. “I can’t—it’s too much, Mikey. Slow down. I’m getting…some guy in the house? With a gun?”
And he shoots Joe! Mikey pulled away from Gerard and went over to pull a handful of underwear out of his dresser drawer. He’s gonna shoot Joe because he’s breaking in here to look for us, but if we aren’t here, maybe he won’t come. And we gotta warn Joe, we gotta tell him— He broke off and tried to gather his scattered thoughts.
Gerard’s eyes were huge. “What?” he said. “Who is this guy? Why’s he looking for us? Why does he shoot Joe?”
Mikey took a deep breath. I don’t know, he said. But he was looking for us because that Ben Lee guy told him about us. He glanced at the digital clock on his dresser. It was 2:45, and Joe was still alive, watching the South Park movie on his iPod--Mikey could hear him if he focused his mind and listened. The guy wasn’t coming tonight.
“I don’t understand,” said Gerard. “What, is it like a business thing, where, like, we’re helping Pete, so he wants to kidnap us so we can help him? Or is it the government or something?”
They were wasting way too much time. Does it matter? Mikey asked, going to the closet to pull out his favorite tee-shirts. They’d have to travel light, so he couldn’t take all of them.
“I guess not,” Gerard muttered. “Okay. We leave, the guy doesn’t come and shoot Joe. I’m with you. But if his whole point is to get us, won’t he follow us if we leave now? Can’t we wait until morning and get Pete to, like, fly us to Hawaii or something?”
That made sense. But it didn’t feel right. Mikey cast his mind back to the dream. He’d been totally confident in the dream. Nobody could stop him from getting what he’d come for, and he didn’t care what he had to do to get it. He’ll kill Pete, too, he said. Something occurred to him, and he added, I think there’s more than one of them. You don’t get it, Gee, they’ll do anything to get us. It’s like you said before, Pete and Patrick and Andy and Joe can’t stop it. It wouldn’t do anything--we’d just be putting them in danger, and superheroes don’t do that.
He knew he’d gotten Gerard with the superhero thing. Gerard took that stuff really seriously. “Okay, yeah,” he said finally. “We can go to that place on the starcase map. It’s out in the middle of nowhere—whoever this guy is, he’s not gonna look for us there. But how are we gonna get there?”
We could call a cab, Mikey suggested.
Gerard shook his head. “No cab’s gonna pick up two kids at a quarter to three in the morning. And we’re not gonna get anywhere walking. I mean, it’s like two hundred miles to Cork Valley.”
I don’t know, Gerard! Mikey could feel his eyes burning, but he closed his eyes before tears could fall. He wasn’t a baby, and this wasn’t the time for crying. I just know we gotta go before this guy comes and just, just takes us, okay, so we have to think of something!
Gerard brought his hand to his mouth and started biting at the skin around his fingernails, a bad habit Mama’d always scolded him about, staring at Mikey with serious eyes. For the first time in a long time, Mikey couldn’t tell what his brother was thinking. “I think I maybe have an idea,” Gerard said slowly. “I mean, God, this is so stupid, because I’m the worst horseback rider ever, but….”
Snowball? Mikey hadn’t even considered that possibility, but Snowball was a pretty fast horse. Still….Snowball can’t run two hundred miles, he said. That’d kill him.
“Yeah, I know,” said Gerard, nodding. “But he could probably get us back to the Smith Home. Because I was thinking, you know who’d be really good at running away? Frank. Doesn’t he seem like somebody who’d be really good at this stuff?”
You think Frank can help us get to Cork Valley? Mikey was kind of dubious. Frank was a year younger than Mikey, even, and he sucked at keeping quiet and under the radar. Then again, though, he was super tough, and it’d be awesome to see him again. Mikey looked regretfully at the guitar Patrick had given him, leaning sadly against the wall in his closet. It sucked that he couldn’t take it with him. Frank would have loved it.
Gerard nodded. “Why not? Lemme go get some stuff, and we can go.” He turned to leave, but before he got to the doorway, he turned around and gave Mikey another serious look. “This is crazy. You know that, right?” He shook his head. “Assassins after us, and running away on horseback—totally crazy.”
Mikey didn’t say anything. It wasn’t like their lives had been that normal to begin with.
He finished packing. It didn’t take that long, really. Pete and Patrick had given him a lot of stuff, but none of it felt like his, so it wasn’t hard to pick out his worn jeans and old tee-shirts and leave just about everything else behind. He took the iPod, though. He hoped Pete wasn’t pissed. But he’d gotten it up past 5,000 songs, and who knew when and where he’d ever have access to that much music again.
Bunny made a small, uncertain-sounding noise from the bed. Surely Mikey wasn’t going to leave her behind?
Mikey stuffed his starcase into his front backpack pocket and scooped up Bunny into his arms. Of course not, he said. Bunny grumbled, said he wasn’t holding her back side up enough, but her rumbly little purr gave her away.
Gerard poked his head in. “Hey, you ready?” he said in a whisper. Mikey didn’t know why he was whispering now; he hadn’t seemed to be worried about being heard during their earlier conversation.
Just about, Mikey said. He looked around his room, the room Pete and Patrick had picked out and furnished just for him. The urgency of his fear had gone, leaving only sadness behind, and he said, Hey, you have a piece of paper?
“Sure,” said Gerard, pulling his sketchpad out of his backpack and tearing off a sheet. “Why?”
I wanna leave a note. He dug a pencil out of his pocket. “Dear Patrick and Pete and Andy and Joe,” he wrote. After a moment’s thought, he added, “and Dirty. I’m sorry we’re running away, and I hope you don’t worry. But there are bad guys after us and we didn’t want you to get hurt. Thank you for the iPod and the rooms. You guys are awesome. Love, Mikey and Gerard.” He passed it over to Gerard. Is that okay?
Gerard bit his lower lip as he read, and his eyes got suspiciously wet. “Yeah,” he said thickly. He ducked his head so his hair hid his eyes—as if Mikey didn’t know he was tearing up—and pulled a crumpled-up wad of paper out of his pocket. “MapQuest directions,” he explained, though Mikey hadn’t asked.
It wasn’t hard to sneak out. They just walked past Patrick’s bedroom into the living room. Gerard left the note on the coffee table while Mikey opened the patio door. The security system was the easiest thing in the world to turn off. Mikey just had to concentrate on it for a minute, and then they were out on the patio. It was actually kind of chilly, which made Mikey feel strangely better about things. It had been hot in his dream.
Snowball was asleep when they walked out to his shed. Mikey felt kind of bad about waking him, but he was pretty sure Snowball would agree that this was an emergency. Snowball, he said, I need a favor.
Snowball was pretty pissed off about being woken up, but when Mikey told him about the people after them and Joe getting shot and stuff, he got how serious it was. Or, well, he asked why they thought he cared about any of the stupid humans at stupid Decaydance, but he let them both onto his back, without even snorting or threatening to bite Gerard too much.
It felt weird, riding off into the dark night, Snowball’s hooves clacking on the pavement while Gerard clung for dear life to Mikey’s back. Weird, and a little bit dangerous. But it also felt right in a way that nothing had for months, and Mikey couldn’t stop himself from smiling a little. It wasn’t like anyone could see him.
**
Frank didn’t believe his eyes when he woke up at some ungodly hour of the morning, like, five or six or something, to see the Minnelli brothers hovering over his bed. This had to be another weird-ass dream, because what the hell would they be doing in his room this early?
“Hey, Frank,” Gerard whispered, smiling in a way that didn’t look like a smile at all and darting his eyes over to where Bill and Adam were asleep in their bunks.
“Mrgh,” said Frank. Because there was no way this wasn’t a dream—he totally felt asleep.
Mikey stared at him solemnly, Bunny curled up against his chest and peering at Frank with big reflective eyes. “Frank,” he said quietly, “you gotta wake up. We need your help.”
Frank rubbed a little grit out of his eyes and blinked at them, and then he looked around the room. His room seemed the same as always, from the Henry Rollins poster over the desk to the pile of dirty laundry in front of the closet to the soft sound of the Butcher snoring from the top bunk, all of it way too detailed for a dream. Some of the sleep-fuzziness cleared from his mind, and it hit him—this was real, and Gerard and Mikey were totally hanging out in his room.
“Oh, man! You guys!” He forgot to whisper, and they winced.
“Shh,” said Gerard.
“Sorry,” said Frank, lowering his voice. “God, you have no idea how glad I am to see you. It’s been so boring since you left. Jamia got sent to live with, like, this doctor and his wife, and Bill shoplifted a Playboy from the gas station and now all he and Adam and the Butcher do is, like, jerk off all the time, which is totally lame.” He grinned at them, because there were lots of things you could say about the Minnelli brothers, but you could never say they were boring. “What are you guys doing here, anyway?” He asked.
Gerard fidgeted with the cuffs of his hoody uncomfortably. “Um. We’re sort of running away.”
Frank jerked up straight in his bed. In his experience, kids ran away from foster homes all the time. Sometimes for better reasons than others—Frank remembered running away a couple years back because he had to share a room with an annoying little kid who watched professional wrestling videos all the time. But he knew kids who’d run away for other, scarier reasons, and he had a sneaking suspicion that Gerard and Mikey weren’t the type to run unless it was important. “Did those rich guys do something? Did they hit you?” Because if they had, all the money in the world wouldn’t save them from Frank Iero kicking their asses.
Gerard shook his head. “No. Patrick and Pete were cool. But….” He shot a look over at his brother, and they did their weird psychic message exchange thing before Gerard turned back to Frank. “This guy found out about us, and then Mikey had a dream that somebody was gonna come kidnap us, and he had a gun—the guy in the dream, not Mikey—and he was gonna kill anybody who got in his way. And I don’t know what he was gonna do with us, but it wasn’t good.”
Jesus Christ. Frank looked from Gerard to Mikey and back again. He didn’t think they’d make up this kind of stuff, but maybe they’d misunderstood something and were getting freaked out for nothing. It sounded kind of…out there. On the other hand, they were…whatever it was they were, superheroes or mutants or aliens or whatever, and Frank had seen enough movies to know that the government and other assorted bad guys were always interested in using super powers for their own twisted ends.
“What do you need me to do?” Frank asked. Because that had to be why they’d come. Two months of friendship with Mikey and Gerard had taught him that they knew a lot about music and horror movies and books, but not a whole lot about stuff like feeding or defending themselves. Frank actually felt a little honored that he was the guy they’d come to for stuff like that—not just anybody could say they were a mentor to a pair of superheroes.
Mikey shrugged a little with one shoulder. “We thought maybe you’d wanna come, too.”
Frank was so overwhelmed by the thought for a second that he couldn’t even talk. “Oh, shit,” he finally managed. “That would be so fucking awesome!”
“Yeah?” Gerard smiled again, hesitant but real this time. “You sure? ’Cause I mean, it’s probably gonna be super dangerous and stuff, and we’re going to this total nowhere on the starcase map to hide out, and it’s pretty cool here, and….”
“Dude, shut up,” said Frank, but not meanly, because he wasn’t pissed or anything. “I’m totally going with you.” This was seriously the most exciting thing that had happened to Frank in forever, like suddenly life had dropped him in the middle of a Bruce Willis movie. And sure, the Smith Home was awesome for a group home, and Spencer and Brendon and Jon and Ryan were all super nice, but living there wasn’t like helping Gerard and Mikey because they were on the run from a killer who wanted to kidnap them because they had psychic powers. Plus, Frank was a pain in the ass—he was an honest kind of guy, he could admit it—so he’d probably be making everyone’s life at the Home a lot easier if he left.
And then Mikey smiled at him with his big goofy toothy smile, and then Gerard smiled at him with his big goofy toothy smile, and Frank was more sure than ever that he was making the right decision.
He got out of bed to go over to the dresser and get his stuff together. He didn’t have much, just some old clothes and a few books and…oh, shit. “I can’t take my guitar on the run, can I?” he said.
“Well,” said Gerard, scrunching up his face on one side, “I dunno.”
Shit, shit, shit. Frank bent down to dig it out from under his bed and ran his hand over the worn leather case. It wasn’t like a rock star guitar, he knew, and it wasn’t even in good shape, and who took a guitar on the run with them? You couldn’t run with a guitar, and it took up space in a car if you hitchhiked. It wasn’t even like his case had a shoulder strap. But it was his grandpa’s.
“You should take it,” said Mikey. Frank and Gerard both looked at him, and he stared back earnestly. “I still have some room in my backpack,” he said, “so you could stuff some of your stuff in there, and maybe put some of it in Gerard’s, so then you wouldn’t have to take your backpack and you could take your guitar instead.”
“What about food?” asked Frank, not willing to get his hopes up yet. “You got room for food?”
Mikey shrugged. “Not really,” he said, “but I have some money, so we could buy stuff.”
It was a dumbass idea, Frank knew. But he fucking loved that guitar. And it wasn’t like he couldn’t ditch it later, if it was slowing them down.
He ducked into the bathroom to change out of his pajamas and grab his toothbrush, and Mikey and Gerard were waiting for him when he got out. “We gotta go,” said Gerard nervously. “It’s gonna be light soon.” He frowned as if remembering something and added, “Shouldn’t you leave a note or something? So Spencer and Brendon and Jon won’t worry?”
Frank rolled his eyes, because Spencer and Brendon and Jon were clearly gonna worry anyway, but he scribbled out something about helping Gerard and Mikey find their family on a piece of paper ripped from his math notebook. “Happy now?” he asked. “We can leave it under Spencer’s office door when we go downstairs.”
“Okay,” said Gerard, looking relieved.
Sneaking down the stairs quietly wasn’t easy, but Frank had actually gotten some experience doing it over the eight months he’d been living at the Home, for night games of Capture the Flag and stuff, and Gerard and Mikey were surprisingly good at creeping quietly through the creaky old house.
When they got past Spencer’s office, down to the front door, there was an honest-to-God horse waiting for them by the porch. “Holy shit,” said Frank, unable to believe his eyes, “did you guys actually ride a horse over here?”
Mikey smiled. “Snowball,” he said, as if that explained everything. He did his mind-meld thing with the horse for a moment and then frowned. “He’s tired and thirsty,” he said, “And there’s no way he can carry all three of us.”
Frank couldn’t help but be a little disappointed; he’d never ridden a horse before. But Gerard seemed to take it pretty well. “We were gonna have to leave him anyway,” he said with a shrug. “We’re going too far.”
“So where is this place, anyway?” Frank hadn’t had much luck searching for the places on Mikey’s starcase after the Minnellis left, not least because he couldn’t remember what they were called.
“It’s, like, 200 miles away,” said Gerard.
“Jesus.” Well, there was no way they could walk, then, especially if hitmen were after them. And it was almost sunrise, so they were gonna have to haul some ass if they wanted to make it to the highway to hitchhike before Spencer woke up. “Let’s go to the gas station on 4th Street,” he said. A lot of truckers went through there to refill their tanks and get coffee, and maybe they could get a ride with one of them.
“Just wait a minute,” said Mikey, walking over to the horse and gazing into its eyes. That damn kid and his animals, thought Frank, and he was no psychic, but it looked like Gerard was thinking the same thing.
“Mikey….” Gerard said nervously.
Mikey sighed loudly. He dropped Bunny on the ground and pulled a water bottle out of his backpack, and then he gave it to the horse to drink while rubbing its nose. Finally, he pulled away, looking sadly at Gerard. “I know. We gotta go. I just had to say goodbye.”
“So wait, we’re just leaving the horse?” Frank said. “Boy, Spencer’s gonna be surprised when he wakes up and finds a horse at his front door.”
Mikey shook his head. “Snowball knows his way home.”
Well, whatever. This wasn’t The Incredible Journey or whatever that movie was, the one with the dogs finding their way home after their family moved without them, this was real life. “Come on, guys,” said Frank. “We gonna run away or not?”
Frank had pretty much figured it was gonna suck getting to the gas station—neither Mikey nor Gerard was exactly next in line for Athlete of the Year or anything. But he was pleasantly surprised. They more or less managed to keep up, and maybe Gerard complained a little bit and Mikey made a lot of faces, but they were still making pretty good time.
It was 8:20 by Frank’s watch by the time they made it to the gas station. There weren’t any big truck rigs yet, but it was still early, and there was a van parked next to the pumps that could be promising. “Guys, guys,” he said, because he was getting super hungry. “Let’s go in and get some snacks, and then we’ll come back out here and try to get a ride.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Gerard. “I’d kill for a Coke right now.” He wiped some sweat off his forehead with a big, dramatic gesture which Mikey immediately copied, and Frank couldn’t help but giggle a little. Their musical theater mom might not have been actually related to them, but she’d definitely managed to pass something on to her sons.
They walked in, ducking around the racks of cigarettes to the aisle with the chips and Hostess pastries. There was a big blond guy at the counter, talking to the gas station guy, but neither of them seemed to notice the three kids. Which was probably for the best, Frank thought, if they were gonna try to be incognito. Green Day was playing over the radio, and it made Frank super glad he’d decided to bring his guitar.
“Oh, man, Twinkies,” Mikey was saying, gazing at the Hostess pastries as if they held the key to ultimate happiness.
Gerard frowned. “I don’t know, Mikey,” he said, “shouldn’t we maybe try to get something healthier, like a sandwich or something?”
“Fuck that,” said Frank, grabbing for a bag of Doritos. “When I Come Around” switched off the radio, and the DJ started talking.
“We should at least get some milk,” said Gerard, but Mikey’s whole body had gone stiff, and Frank suddenly found himself very uninterested in the box of granola bars he’d been contemplating.
“What is it, Mikey?” Frank asked. If Mikey was already getting bad feelings, Frank didn’t have a whole lot of hope for this venture.
Mikey scowled. “Shh! Listen!”
Frank didn’t understand what he was supposed to be listening to, but he obligingly shut his mouth. The blond guy at the counter and the attendant had stopped talking, too, and the DJ’s voice piped through the gas station.
“…according the nice folks at the Smith Home and Mr. Wentz’s representatives, people should be on the lookout for three boys, one about 4 foot 1 with bleached blond hair, one about 4 foot 8 with brown hair and glasses, and one…” Oh, fuck.
“Jesus,” snorted the gas station attendant, “how far could three kids who can’t even drive get?”
“Maybe they called a cab,” said the blond man wryly. “Dude, how much for all this stuff?”
Shit, they had to move fast—once the blond guy was gone, there’d be nothing distracting the gas station attendant from the fact that the three missing kids were hanging out in the back of his store. “Drop the Twinkies, Mikey!” Frank hissed. Mikey obeyed, his eyes huge, and Frank grabbed both him and Gerard by the sleeves and dragged them back around the corner of the aisle, so they could watch for the right moment to duck out.
“Frank,” Mikey whispered. Frank shushed him, but Mikey said, “No, Frank, do we need a distraction?”
Well, a distraction would be pretty fucking handy, but they sure didn’t have time to come up with an elaborate plan right then and there. Frank would have somehow communicated this to Mikey by means of facial expressions and pointed gestures, but Mikey was already letting go of Bunny, who sauntered primly into the middle of the gas station.
“What the--” the attendant said, staring. “Where the hell did that cat come from?” The blond man turned around to look, and Mikey grinned at Frank before slipping out the door.
That kid. Frank followed, Gerard on his heels, and they were out. “Now what?” said Gerard, looking a little frantic.
They didn’t have a lot of options—Bunny wasn’t going to be able to keep those guys distracted long enough to give them time to get to the highway, and now they’d have people looking for them. Frank’s eyes lighted on the van parked by the pumps, and he ran over to test the doors. “Fuck!” he said, frustrated. “They’re locked.”
“That’s not a problem,” said Gerard. “Are we gonna sneak in the back?”
“That’s the plan, yeah,” Frank said, doing his best not to get irritated. He knew Gerard and Mikey had brought him along to be the brains, but Christ, hadn’t they ever seen a movie? “But first we gotta--”
“Try the locks again,” said Mikey.
Frank stared for a moment, then pulled at the back door of the van. It came open easily. Of course, Frank thought. Of course, fucking Mikey Minnelli could open locks with his fucking mind.
Gerard smiled briefly before he twisted his mouth with worry again. “Don’t we have to, you know, hurry?”
Mikey gave Gerard the psychic message look again, and Gerard sighed. A moment later, Bunny came running out of the gas station, jumping into Mikey’s arms, and Frank honestly didn’t know they could move that fast, but in the blink of an eye, they’d pulled him, guitar and all, into the back of the van and Gerard glared at the door fiercely until it closed.
“Christ,” said Frank, amazed at how quickly it had happened. Gerard and Mikey gave him another worried look in unison, like they were acting with one brain, and he grinned so hard he could feel the corners of his mouth ache with it. This was so much better than being in a Bruce Willis movie.
Part 6
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