“Yes, but—”
“I’m being proactive.”
Any comment Nix might have made was lost beneath the roar as he shot past her, engine bellowing, wheels kicking sand behind him. He thought he heard her screaming his name, but he didn’t look back.
Benny shot past the playground and the orchard. The monks and the children all stared at him, but no one said anything. Or maybe he heard one of the older monks yelling even louder than Nix had. Something about slowing down, probably. Benny chose not to hear that admonition. This wasn’t a convenient time for obeying rules.
This was a time for taking action.
The trench was forty yards ahead. Once he cleared the last of the orchards, he angled left, heading toward the point where the steel bridge was lowered twice a day. There was a yard-long lip of metal that stuck out over the drop, and it was wider than the bridge. Good enough on either side for the wheel width of the quad.
Benny hoped.
On the other side of the trench there was only a metal plate. No bridge or other obstructions.
He had never done this before, of course. Not even in his head.
It was all a matter of speed and angle.
And luck.
“Come on, Tom,” he growled as he gave the quad more gas. “Little help from beyond would be cool.”
He gave the engine all the gas it would take, and the motor roared like a living thing. Feral and alive and powerful.
“Come on . . . come on!” Benny yelled.
The raised bridge was there, right there, the four soldiers flanking it. They gaped at him as if he was absolutely out of his mind. Benny could see their point.
Two of them brought up their rifles, and Benny flattened out over the steering column, making himself the smallest possible target.
Of course, if a bullet did hit him, it would nail him on the top of the head. That gave him a moment’s pause. The quad, undeterred by thoughts of mortality, kept racing onward.
“HALT!” roared the guards.
There was the hollow krak-krak-krak of gunfire.
Benny braced against the impact.
Felt nothing.
Kept going.
Benny hurtled toward the bridge, gathering every ounce of speed, and then at the last possible second he turned the wheels and the quad shot past the guards and past the upraised steel and flew out over empty space.
There was a single bump as one rear wheel brushed the edge of the gate. Just that one tap; Benny had done it right.
He screamed—loud and raw and free—as the sense of speed seemed to vanish and the quad hung in the air, untethered by gravity, a beautiful soaring thing. Below him the twenty-foot span of the trench seemed to move with a strange slowness, as if time itself had wound down. He looked down and saw, with a flash of panic, that the front wheels were already starting to dip toward the bottom of the trench, and the far side looked a million miles away. Benny pulled on the handlebars as if he could lift the whole machine through sheer force of muscle and will.
Then the lip of the trench was there, and the soft tires chunked down onto the ground inches past it. There was a second thump as the rear wheels hit, and the jolt rattled Benny’s bones and snapped his teeth shut. His hands were still rolled forward, still feeding gas to the engine, so there was a moment when inertia and impact and gravity collided into a grinding nothing as wheels turned and great plumes of tan sand
kicked up behind him and the quad shivered like it was coming apart. Then the tire treads bit deep and the thrust of the engine overcame the downward pull of gravity, and Benny’s quad shot forward like a bullet from a gun.
Benny let rip a yell of rough joy and sheer excitement.
Krak! Krak!
He could hear the shots, but nothing hit him. Or he prayed not. There was no pain, no heavy thud of impact, no burn of ruined nerves and tissues.