The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (Alfred Kropp 1)

I got back on the highway and the Ferrari sped up to seventy-five like it was cruising a neighborhood street. Bennacio told me to go faster. At ninety he told me to go faster again. At 110 I told him I wasn’t going any faster because if I drove any faster, my stomach would come out of my mouth. He didn’t say anything after that.

I wished I could put the top down. I had always wanted a convertible and to take it onto the open road like in a commercial and go a hundred miles an hour with the top down.

After an hour, the black cell phone rang. Bennacio flipped it open, listened for a second, then said, “It is too late. They are dead.” He snapped it closed and tossed it out the window.

He leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes, and said, “I must rest now. Wake me when you are tired and I will drive.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. I was pretty upset. There had been more blood flying around than in a horror movie. I had somehow found myself in an R-rated movie when all I wanted was PG-13. “There’s a whole lot I don’t get, Bennacio, like why we’re driving in a hot car to Nova Scotia; why people are trying to kill us; what the heck OIPEP is and how it fits into all this; how Mogart or anybody else could use a sword no matter how powerful to take over the whole world; and why any of this had to happen to me in the first place. But what I really don’t get is why you had to slaughter those guys like that.”

“They would have slaughtered us.”

“But how’s that make you any different from them?”

“They are servants of the enemy—”

“So?”

“—thralls of the Dragon. Would you have them live to pursue us to our end?”

“I just don’t get it, that’s all. Chopping off people’s heads and cutting out their guts . . .”

“You would not pity them if you knew them as I do.”

“I don’t know anybody who deserves something like that.”

“You are afraid. I understand.” His eyes were still closed. He spoke kindly to me, like a father would, or how I imagined a father would, since I never knew my father.

“You may pull off and find the nearest bus terminal if you wish, Kropp. I will give you the money for a ticket. I am well enough now to drive the rest of the way.”

I thought about it. I thought about it hard. His offer was tempting, but really, where would I go? I didn’t want to live with the Tuttles, and if I went back to Knoxville I wouldn’t have a choice. Then all of a sudden I thought about that little beach town in Florida where Mom used to take me every summer. Maybe I could go there and get a job and live on the beach until the world ended. There were a lot worse places you could wait for the end of the world.

And, really, what did I think I was doing—me, Alfred Kropp of all people—driving a hundred miles an hour in a Ferrari Enzo with a modern-day knight by my side? Who the heck did I think I was?

“It was because of what Mogart did to Mr. Samson, wasn’t it?” I asked finally. “The reason you mutilated those guys.”

“Samson was my captain, Kropp,” Bennacio said. “And there are some debts that cry to heaven to be repaid.”

19

We were about twenty-five miles north of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, when Bennacio told me to take the next exit. We had been on the road for over sixteen hours and maybe he noticed how much I was yawning and rubbing my eyes. We hadn’t stopped since Edinburg except to fill up on gas and use the john.

I started to turn into a Super 8 just off the exit, but Bennacio told me to keep driving. I drove west on Highway 501, which hugged the edge of Swatara State Park. Trees crowded both sides of the road and there were no streetlights; it felt as if we were driving through a tunnel. I thought maybe the idea was to park somewhere in the woods and sleep in the car. We passed a sign that said “Suedberg 2 mi.”

About a mile past the sign, Bennacio told me to turn onto a little dirt lane that wound up a hill, then through a dense group of trees. On the other side of the trees was a bridge that spanned a little creek, and after the bridge the road narrowed until it ended at a house set back in the woods. It reminded me of the houses from those old scary children’s stories, like the witch’s house in Hansel and Gretel.

Maybe this was like a safe house for the knights, a refuge for when they were in the area, cavorting about on an adventure.

I stopped the car and Bennacio said, “Kropp, you must stay here for a moment.”

He got out of the car and I called to him before he shut the door. “How come?”

“I don’t know how you will be received.”

He mounted the steps. The front door opened, and a dark shape was silhouetted in the light from inside. This person wore a dress, so I figured it was a woman. She hugged Bennacio, rising on her toes to kiss both his cheeks. She bent her head while he whispered in her ear. Then her head came up and she looked at me.

Maybe she said something to Bennacio, because he waved his hand toward me, and the two of them disappeared inside.

I got out and locked the car: The place was isolated and you never know what might be lurking in the woods. I was still pretty shaken up by our encounter with Mogart’s henchmen back in Edinburg, and every shadow seemed to be holding a two-foot-long black dagger. I was finding out the hard way that the world is always more dangerous than you think it is.