The Thirteenth Skull

  “So Ashley’s alive. I can’t escape without Ashley. But I can’t escape anyway. He’ll just track me down. Well, I’ll have take that chance . . . Maybe if I get a head start on them. . . The transmitter is tiny, the size of an eraser; its range can’t be that great. With a good head start maybe . . . maybe . . .

  “So I’ve got to get Ashley. Then we’ve got to get out of this valley. Then we’ve got to get out of Canada. Then we’ve got to get . . .”

  Where?

  Where in the whole world could I hide from them? Where would be safe?

  “I’ve got to find Sam. He put the thing in my head; he’ll know how to get it out.”

  I pushed myself off the bed and swayed, holding my arms out from my sides like a tightrope walker for balance. Dr. Mingus must have drained half my blood the day before. What did OIPEP plan to do with my blood? They had taken it before to fight the demons, but they had the Seal now—why would they need my blood to fight demons they could control with Solomon’s ring?

  “Something else,” I muttered, closing my eyes, but that made the dizziness worse, so I opened them again. “Not demons. Something really evil. Mingus is a genetic engineer. . . . Cloning! They’re cloning Kropp to make a . . . make a what? A clone army? Army of the Kropp clones? Man, that’s sick.”

  Sick . . . and senseless. The power of my blood didn’t make me invincible. It wasn’t like holy armor or anything.

  Thinking of armor reminded me of the Knights of the Sacred Order. I never saw one of them in armor, but I did see a suit of it in a closet once, at a little Hansel and Gretel type house in Pennsylvania, where the mother of one of the knights lived. I wasted a few seconds trying to remember her name. I could see her face in my mind’s eye, and the house set back in the woods. The house was close to a state park whose name I also couldn’t remember near a little town not far from Harrisburg . . .

  He flew into Harrisburg two nights ago, where he rented a car and drove to a tiny hamlet called Suedberg.

  Jourdain Garmot went to Suedberg, where the knight named Windimar had lived. Why? What was he looking for?

  The last knightly quest . . . for the Thirteenth Skull.

  So the Skull must have been connected somehow to the Knights of the Sacred Order. Maybe it was something they kept hidden, like the Sword. Maybe destroying my father’s house wasn’t about revenge . . . mayb e Jourdain was there looking for the Skull and then set the house on fire to destroy the evidence.

  I was losing focus. Jourdain Garmot and the Thirteenth Skull didn’t matter now. Medcon had planted the story of my death before I even came to Camp Echo, so Jourdain Garmot thought I was dead.

  Maybe if I started moving something would come to me. The plan. The-thing-that-must-be-done. Take a step. Then the next step. Don’t think about the 779th step. Just the first one.

  I stumbled into the bathroom. That was like fifteen steps already.

  Time for an inventory. Shower curtain and those little rings holding it to the rod. The rod? I gave it a shake. Aluminum, too flimsy. A bar of soap. A travel-sized plastic bottle of dandruff shampoo. Why had they given me dandruff shampoo? Was I flaky? I turned to the mirror and was shocked by my reflection. My face was no longer the familiar oval shape I’d had since childhood. I had lost nearly forty pounds since I stole Excalibur from beneath my father’s desk. My face was thin and angular, which made my eyes seem very large on either side of my nose, now slightly crooked after being broken by Delivery Dude. I was so shocked by my appearance I forgot to hunt for dandruff. I looked like a vampire—only I was the opposite of a vampire: vampires drink other people’s blood to give themselves life; I gave my blood to others to give them life.

  I opened the medicine cabinet. No razors or other sharp objects, not even a pair of tweezers. A toothbrush, but it was plastic and the end was blunt—I’d have to sharpen it somehow and, even if I had a way to do it, I didn’t have the time.

  I decided to brush my teeth. God knew when I’d have another opportunity and, besides, brushing your teeth is one of those normal, mundane things that really center you.

  A glob of toothpaste fell from my mouth onto the bandage around my hand and I rinsed it off without thinking.

  I grabbed a towel and dabbed off the extra water, but the bandage still felt moist. I could feel my heartbeat in the palm. Maybe I should take it off and wash the wound with some soap. The last thing I needed was an infection.

  I’d unwrapped about half of it—Mingus had really wound me up with a lot—when I got an idea. It was a tiny germ of an idea, so I stood there at the sink, not moving, until the idea grew a little, then a little more, until it was not so little and germy anymore.

  Grabbing the shampoo from the stall, I unscrewed the cap, emptied the contents into the sink, and then I rinsed it out a couple of times. I sidestepped to the toilet, but couldn’t make myself go. That’s what pressure does to you, like when you’re at a ballpark or movie theater, trying to go while five guys stand in line behind you, waiting for you to finish already!

  Water. Lots of water and hopefully enough time for it to work through my system. I ducked my head under the tap and drank until I lost count of the swallows. I wondered why I was bothering to count them. I left the empty shampoo bottle on the back of the toilet and went to the closet in the main room. I dressed in a fresh jumpsuit, and then took the empty wooden hanger and snapped it in two across my knee. I tossed the piece with the hook onto the closet floor, sat on the bed, and pulled the rest of the gauze from my hand. How much time until they came for me? Ten minutes? Five? Two? And how much wrap? Too short and I wouldn’t be able to position it. Too long and I wouldn’t be able to tighten it.

  I tore off an arm’s length of the gauze, using my teeth to get the tear started, twirled it until it was firm and ropelike, then tied the two ends together to make a loop. I dropped the loop over my head. Might be a little too big, but there was no time to mess with it. I pried the knot open just enough to slip the broken piece of wood through. After I tightened the knot around the wood, I yanked on the loop to test it.

  I went back to the bathroom and grabbed the empty shampoo bottle. An imaginary clock ticked loudly inside my head as I tried to force myself to go. The shampoo bottle had a very small opening, maybe the size of a quarter, and I couldn’t let loose full stream, but thank God my aim was true. I screwed the cap back on. It was one of those flip top numbers: you pressed down on one edge, exposing the little rectangular hole for the liquid to pass through. It wouldn’t have the power or distribution of an aerosol and I’d have just one shot at it. Samuel had told me once that if something was necessary, it was possible. He’d better be right.

  I heard the stomp of boots on the steps outside.

  Time’s up, Kropp. Step-by-step now. Step-by-step.

  I ducked into the main room, grabbed my socks from the closet shelf, and plopped on the bed.

  The electronic tings answered fingers punching keys on the pad by the door.

  Step: Pull on right sock.

  Step: Stuff bottle into sock.

  The pop! of the lock snapping open.

  Step: Left sock.

  Doorknob turning.

  Step: Jam hanger and rope into left sock.

  The door flew open. A blast of freezing air rushed in.

  I had jumped from the bed and was shaking my left leg to make the pants fall over the big bulge in my sock when the two goons from the day before—in my mind, I called them Thing 1 and Thing 2—filled the doorway.

  “Up already?” Thing 1 rumbled.

  “My first lobotomy,” I said. “I’m pretty excited.”

  03:03:26:31

  I stepped into a postcard-perfect landscape of snow-covered mountains and bright blue sky reflected in the glass-flat surface of the lake. The thin air cut into my lungs and halfway up the trail to the main cabin I was huffing like a marathon runner on the twenty-fifth mile.

  Ten minutes later we were inside the château. There was the ubiquitous fire roaring.
There was all the eerie silence and pooling shadows of a haunted house. Past the kitchen, where I mentioned breakfast and where Thing 2 reminded me it wasn’t wise to eat before going under general anesthesia. Down a long, narrow hallway, where I stumbled once and Thing 1 caught me. Through the metal door and down the steps into the medical facility, where I looked down and saw the loop sticking out beside my boot. I was busted if they noticed. They didn’t notice. “Dead man walking!” Thing 2 called, and Thing 1 laughed.

  They shoved me into an empty examination room and slammed the door. I heard the locking mechanism thump home.

  A couple minutes later, the lock went beep-beep and Dr. Mingus came into the room. Thing 1 and Thing 2 took positions on either side of the door.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” I blurted out. I was sitting on the examination table with my hands behind my back.

  He glanced at the Things, then turned back to me.

  “About my blood powers,” I went on. “Something even OIPEP doesn’t know. Nobody knew about it except the knights, and they’re all dead. You should know about it before you cut me open.”

  “Yes? I’m waiting.”

  “Not in front of them,” I said, jerking my head toward the door.

  His small eyes got even smaller.

  “It’s something you’re really gonna want to know,” I said.

  He waved the Things outside. The door locked behind them. We were alone.

  “There’s a risk of explosion,” I said.

  “Explosion?”

  “Exposing too much of my blood to the air can make it like—um, I don’t know the scientific term for it—expand rapidly maybe . . . ?”

  “The scientific term is explode.”

  I nodded. “Right. Like a bomb.”

  He laughed. He didn’t have a nice laugh. It wasn’t the scary-villain type har-har-har, guttural and harsh; more like the hee-hee-hee giggle of the mad-scientist-cackle variety. I know that’s a stereotype, but there’s a reason we have stereotypes.

  “So how are we feeling this morning? Yesterday was a bit trying, yes?”

  “I slept okay, except I had this weird dream about an old man pulling his own skull from his head and then I found out about Special Device 1031. I guess you wouldn’t consider yanking that puppy out while you’re in there.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Too bad. Can we talk about the frontal lobotomy?”

  “You don’t like the idea?”

  “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me.”

  Nothing. Not even one hee.

  “That’s an old joke,” I said.

  “I don’t get it.”

  You will.

  “How’s the hand?” he asked.

  “Hurts like heck.”

  He stepped between my dangling legs.

  Step: Pop open the shampoo lid.

  “Let’s have a look.”

  “Okay, but I’m warning you, there’s something nasty in it.”

  “I’m a doctor, Alfred. I’m used to nasty.”

  “You asked for it,” I said. I brought the bottle around fast and blasted both his beady little eyes. Instinctively, he brought his hands to his face. He took a couple of stumbling steps backward. I jumped from the table, spun him around, pinned his arms to his sides, dropped the loop over his head, drove my knee into his lower back, and forced him to the floor. I lay spread-eagled on top of his squirming body and spun the wooden handle of my homemade garrote, each turn tightening the noose around his thick neck, until his cries for help were reduced to choking, barely audible sobs.

  It happened very fast, no more than fifteen seconds from the time I squirted him with my pee to me whispering into his beet-red ear, “I’ve got a couple of questions. Here’s the first: do you want to live?”

  He managed to nod, the muscles of his clammy neck rolling beneath my knuckles.

  “Good. Here’s the next: where is she?”

  “You’ll never—ack!—you won’t get past the guards—”

  I twisted the broken hanger a half turn.

  “Down the hall! Right, right, left, right, first door on left, bottom of stairs—room 202!”

  “Okay. Right, left, right—”

  “No! Right, right, left—”

  “Right, left?”

  “Right.”

  “Right, left, right . . . right?”

  “No, no. Two rights—wrong! It’s right, right, left, right!”

  “The last right means you turn right, not ‘you’re correct’ right, right?”

  “Right, right! Right correct-right!”

  I slid off him and pulled back on the garrote.

  “On your feet,” I said. “Slow. Good. Now walk slowly to the door.”

  “They’re armed; you won’t get past them,” he gurgled as we shuffled toward the door.

  “I’m not going past them,” I said. “They’re going past me.”

  03:03:02:16

  So here’s the setup: You’re standing in the hallway outside the locked door of the examination room, just kickin’ back with your partner, your OIPEP killer bro, and maybe you’re talking about the kids or where you’re going on the next vacation or the latest episode of Law & Order or maybe trashing MI:3 (like you believe Tom Cruise could be a secret agent or any of that crap in the movie could happen, like Hollywood knows how it really works), and you hear the keypad on the wall go beep-beep and the gears of the locking mechanism rotate on their well-oiled axis. You step back, waiting for the boss to come out with the lobotomy patient, the tall kid with the gray-streaked hair and weird gray-flecked eyes, only the door doesn’t open. The doc unlocked the door but didn’t come out. How come?

  You glance at your partner, who looks back at you like Hey, don’t look at me, and you hang there for another couple of seconds, hand resting on the butt of your Glock 9mm, chewing on your bottom lip, trying to decide while you wait for the moment to make a decision for you. A minute. Two. Two and a half. Did Kropp jump him? you wonder. Did he change his mind about coming out for some reason? Why unlock the door if you’re not coming out?

  You nod to your partner. We go. He turns the knob. Pushes open the door.

  A blur of white flying toward the far wall. It’s Mingus, sitting on the rolling stool, sliding across the smooth floor, his white lab coat flapping as he spins.

  And no sign of the kid.

  You rush in, guns drawn, and what registers in your head when Mingus screams, “Behind the door, you idiots! He’s behind the door!”?

  You freeze halfway in, but it’s already too late. The door slams and there’s no kid. He’s on the other side.

  The side with the master control panel.

  I smashed one end of the broken hanger into the keypad. On the other side of the door, I could hear them, shouting and cursing, banging on it as if to get me to answer the door. “Shoot the lock! Shoot the lock!” one of the Things was yelling.

  I ran down the hall, reviewing the directions. “Right, right, left, right . . . R, R, L, R. Reggie, Reggie, listen, Reggie. Really, really, lame, really!”

  A guard was stationed by room 202, his black jumper shimmering under the fluorescents. I hadn’t planned for a guard and there was no time now to develop a plan, so I just went on instinct and my experience in dealing with seemingly hopeless situations: I rushed him.

  He managed to free his weapon from the holster before I barreled into him, but there was no time to get off a shot. I grabbed the wrist of his gun hand and slammed my fist into his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him. Then I spun him around, pushed his face against the wall, and twisted his arm behind his back, lifting it toward his shoulder blades until his fingers loosened and the gun fell to the floor.

  I picked it up.

  “The code,” I said.

  “Screw you,” he gasped.

  I let go and stood back, keeping the gun pointed at his head. He turned around and leaned against the wall, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.


  “I’ll shoot you,” I said.

  “Yeah, right.”

  I shot him in the foot.

  He dropped. I stepped over him to the keypad by room 202.

  “The code,” I repeated. “Or I take out the knee.”

  Ashley was hiding behind the door. She came at me as I burst into the room, holding a metal stool that I guessed she intended to smash over my head. She froze when she recognized me.

  “Alfred?”

  “You bet,” I said.

  The stool fell to the floor and then the girl into my arms, burying her face between my shoulder and the base of my neck. A world of blond under my nose and its sweet atmosphere of lilacs. She touched my cheek.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She nodded. Just outside the door I saw the legs of the guard as he started to crawl toward the stairs.

  “Hold on,” I said. I went into the hall, yanked him to his feet, and pressed the muzzle of the gun behind his ear.

  “We’re leaving,” I told him. “You’re our guide.”

  “I don’t think I can walk,” he said.

  I squatted, pushed my left shoulder into his gut, and stood up. His head smacked me in the back when I swung around to motion Ashley out of the room.

  We trotted down the hall, away from the stairs that led back to Mingus and the OIPEP twins, Ashley on my right side, her guard flopping over my left shoulder.

  “Tell me there’s a back door to this place,” I said to him—or rather to his butt, which was two inches from my nose.

  “There’s a back door to this place.”

  I grabbed his dangling legs with both hands and swiveled hard. His head hit the wall with a satisfying smack.

  “Hey!” he said, like he was shocked I whacked his face against the wall.

  I did it again. Whack!

  “Stop that!”

  I started walking again. The hall ended. One corridor branched off to the right, another to the left.

  “Which way?” I asked him.

  “The right way.”

  I smacked him again—whack!—and he shouted, “No, the right hallway—literal right, literal right!”