You Don't Know About Me (31 page)

“I guess so,” I said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Just be Billy Allbright.”

“You mean with a bullet hole in my head.”

“To a ghost, that hole's as trivial as a pimple. The important thing is not to speak. We'll fill in all your thoughts later.”

“Depending on what my face does.”

“Excellent! You're getting the hang of antiacting. Some say ‘Less is more.' We say ‘
Nothing
is more!' ” His face disappeared behind the camera. “Ready?”

“Sure.”

“Camera,” he said. The camera began to click and whir like it needed oil. He raised a hand—“And”—he chopped the air—“antiaction.” His face reappeared. “If either of us says something or does something, don't
try
to react; trust your face. It'll give us all the special defects we need.”

I felt my mouth start to smile. I clamped down on it. It wasn't right for a ghost with a bullet in his head to smile.

Nico must've seen it. “It's okay to smile,” he said. “Anything goes but speech or big movement.”

I tried to just listen to the camera and feel the sun on my face. Then the bullet hole began to itch. I wanted to reach up and scratch it. That almost made me laugh. I thought about wrinkling my forehead to scratch it, but then it would be really hysterical if my forehead wrinkle undid the glue and the bullet hole fell off. That did it. I had to grin.

“Excellent,” Nico said, “you're doing great.”

After that he totally switched gears. He started talking about when they called my mom on the phone. He told me about how upset she was. About how she threatened them if anything happened to me. And about how she ended up crying and praying for God to smite Nico dead if he lifted a finger against me.

I knew what they were doing, trying to get reactions out of me, trying to get special defects. And I'm sure they were getting plenty, including the time I glared at the camera and
prayed for God to punish them for being liars, cheats, thieves, and blackmailers.

It's so weird how the Almighty answers your prayers sometimes. Most of the time it's like voice mail. You leave your message and wait for Him to get back to you. This time was a first. It was like God worked at a Chinese take-out place, picked up the phone, and said,
Hey, what's it gonna be?

God's answer started with the faint sound of an engine behind me. It bounced off the canyon walls. The louder it got, the more alarmed Nico and Momi looked. Their faces were popping with special defects. At first I thought Ruah had busted through the gate with Giff. But then I heard more than one engine. And they were coming fast.

Nico stared past me with wild eyes. “What the hell?”

Momi's hands balled up in fists. “Shit!”

I turned to look. Around a bend in the canyon came a half-dozen pickups kicking up a cloud of dust. People stood in the beds. Some waved burning torches. When I saw a man in the lead truck—the owner of Kings restaurant—I knew who they were. The wrath of Notus was upon us.

I turned back, expecting to see the Potlatchers run, but Nico shouted orders. “Don't move!” he yelled at me. “We're still shooting! Mo, get up the tower and fire up camera two. We gotta get this!”

She ran to the tower. The roaring caravan of trucks slid to a stop in front of the two buildings. Nico swung the camera toward the action.

The restaurant owner thrust his arm at Nico. “You burned down my restaurant!”

Nico raised his hands. “I'm very sorry about that, King. It was never my intention.”

A cloud of dust rolled over the trucks. Men jumped out and rushed into the house as King shouted, “Sorry's not good enough, Potlatcher!”

“How did you find us?”

“The FedEx guy delivered!” King jumped out of the truck, and led a gang of guys into the other building.

Nico flapped his arms. “That's it, I'm switching to UPS!”

Things smashed in the house. A barrel chair crashed through the window. A window shattered in the other building as a huge wrench flew through it.

Nico yelled up to Momi, who was just reaching the top of the platform. “Shoot first, write later, Mo! It's gonna be the new ending. The first un-movie ends by succumbing to the destruction of action! It's ironic—it's tragic—it's perfect!”

Smoke and flame mushroomed through the broken windows. I remembered my backpack. I ran toward the building.

“Don't go in there!” Nico yelled.

As I got to the open door, I ran smack into someone coming out. It was King. He grabbed my overalls, spun me around, and threw me against the wall. His eyes darted over my face. “What happened to you?”

“Nuthin,” I said. “It's fake.”

He squinted at the bullet hole in my forehead. “Maybe so, but what you're about to get ain't.”

“I'm not with them,” I pleaded. “I was biking through town and stopped behind the restaurant. You must've seen my bike.”

His lips curled off his teeth. “Yeah, it's toast, just like my restaurant.”

He shoved me off the porch. I stumbled back toward Nico and his camera. I couldn't believe he was still shooting, like the whole thing was a movie set. Men poured out of the house, along with clouds of smoke.

King and others came at Nico and me. Nico shouted up to Momi. “Get it all, Mo! The George Lucas Disease strikes again!” King knocked his camera away. Nico shouted “Action!” and dropped to the ground. He curled up in a ball a second before the men began kicking him with their boots.

The sickening thuds and Nico's pitiful yelps made me turn away. I saw men come out of the bigger building and head for the tower. They were going for Momi next. Then me. And it didn't look like their revenge was stopping at an eye for an eye, a fire for a fire. I remembered the knife in my overalls.

As I tried to dig it out, a flash of white came around the bend in the canyon. At first I thought it was a mirage. But it was real. Giff.

I ran toward the camper.

I heard King shout, “The woman's treed! Jimmy, Thad! Get the kid!”

I didn't look back to see who was coming after me. The camper was only thirty yards away when it turned, fish-tailing into a power slide. The passenger door popped open. I jumped in.

Ruah gave me one look and took off. “Jesus! What happened to you?”

I saw he was only steering with his good arm, his right one. I gasped for breath. “Tell you later.”

“Is that the real thing back there or a movie?”

“The real thing.” I checked the outside mirror. A pickup was coming after us. I pushed out the window for a better look. There were two pickups. “And they're coming after us.”

“I noticed, and I only got one good arm.”

“I know how to drive,” I said. And I did—another advantage of moving so much: Mom let me drive on back roads.

Ruah checked his mirror. “There's no time to switch.”

When I spun to see how close the trucks were, I caught my reflection in the outside mirror. I still had the bullet hole. The only vigilante who knew it was fake was King. “We're not gonna outrun these guys, are we?”

“Doubt it,” Ruah answered.

“I got an idea.” I told Ruah what might get us out of this, just before a pickup roared past us in a cloud of dust. I jumped in the back and grabbed a blanket. A second later the camper skidded to a stop.

I was on the couch, under the blanket. I scooched up on my elbows and snuck a peek out the windshield. I could see one pickup in front of us blocking the open gate in the brush fence. The other pickup was behind us. Two doors slammed.

I pulled the blanket under my chin and pretended to shiver. The guy from the pickup behind us passed by the side windows. He was a huge guy, not much older than me, and looked like a football player.

The other one, who came to Ruah's door, I couldn't see. His voice sounded young. “You're not going anywhere, mister,” he told Ruah.

“Not anymore,” Ruah said. “You boys have me blocked in pretty good.”

The guy at Ruah's window kept talking. “We want the kid.”

“That's who I came for too,” Ruah told him.

“Who are you?”

“I work for the hospital up in Boise.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I got a call to pick up a patient that needed emergency treatment. Normally, I'd come in an ambulance, but when it's got a broken axle you come in what you can get.”

The football player finally spoke up. “That kid's not sick. We saw him yesterday. He was fine.”

“Are you gentlemen familiar with how flesh-eating disease works?” Ruah asked.

“What do you mean, ‘flesh-eating disease?' ” the other guy asked.

“I'm sure he looked fine yesterday,” Ruah explained. “But when flesh-eating disease breaks skin, and the patient gets a fever, things get ugly fast.”

“This is bull,” said Football-guy.

Ruah waved a hand at me. “Go ahead, take a look.”

Football-guy leaned through the passenger window and stared at me. I made sure the blanket shook along with my shivering. His eyes squinted. “What's on his head?”

“That's a flesh-eating lesion. He's got a bunch on his body.”

Football-guy backed out the window. “You mean he's bleeding?”

“He's starting to. That's why I've gotta get him to the hospital, where we can deal with the threat.”

“What threat?” the other guy demanded.

Ruah chuckled. “There's a reason they call it FED.”

“What's FED?”

“Flesh-eating Disease, of course. And any disease that likes to feed is contagious.”

Football-guy jumped in. “That's why we carry tire irons and bats.”

Ruah nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose that might protect you, but anyone who gets hit with blood splatter—”

“This is total crap,” the other guy interrupted. “Jimmy, grab the kid outta there and let's go.”

Jimmy looked at me, then the other guy. “Why don't
you
grab him?”

“Look, fellas,” Ruah said, “I'm just trying to do my job, but you guys have me outnumbered and outmaneuvered. If you want him I wish you'd take him, 'cause the longer we sit here the closer he gets to bleeding all over my camper.”

There was a pause that went on forever. Then the guy I couldn't see kicked the door hard. I flinched, went into a shivering fit, and let out a little groan of pain.

“Mister,” the guy said, “we're gonna cut you and that slab of plague back there a break.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy added, “there's no way we're gettin' FED.”

“I appreciate your kindness,” Ruah told them. “It's probably the best decision you'll ever make.”

Jimmy squinted as his brain tried to process Ruah's meaning. He gave up and settled for kicking the door like his friend. The two of them went back to their pickups and roared away, making sure to hit Giff with rooster tails of dust.

I popped off the couch. “That was amazing!” I jumped into the passenger seat. Ruah didn't look at me. His face was tensed up.

“Yeah.” He turned on the wipers to clear the dust. “Our second dust storm in a week.” He looked over. His mouth did a little spasm of a smile. His eyes looked spent and sad. “Now take that damn thing off your forehead.”

Heading to the highway that would take us north to I-84, Ruah grilled me about what was happening in the canyon. I told him about meeting the Potlatchers behind Kings, Burning Man, and going back to be in their movie until the Notus posse showed up to even the score.

As we drove through Homedale, Ruah pulled over at a pay phone. “Go call nine-one-one and tell the cops what's going on in the canyon.”

“How are they gonna find it?”

“All they gotta do is follow the smoke.”

I called 911, but the operator cut me off. Some hikers had already reported the fire and trucks were on the way.
When I told him it was more than a fire, he started asking questions I didn't want to answer. I hung up. Back in the camper, I vowed that when I got to Portland, I'd check and make sure King wasn't as bad as the murderers in Colorado and hadn't turned Cave Sweet Cave into Grave Sweet Grave.

The vow didn't stop me from feeling bad about what had happened. I mean, the Potlatchers weren't evil. Yeah, they were scam artists, but it's not like their sins were all about greed. They stole, lied, and cheated for a cause. They said they wanted to make an un-movie and save people from some disease they called GLASSED. They weren't the first in the world to do bad for what they considered good. The Bible's full of people like that. Jacob lies, cheats, and steals his brother Esau's birthright to the family property. Then Jacob becomes the father of Israel. And then there's Christ. Jesus wasn't exactly loving his neighbor when he grabbed a whip, lashed into the money changers, and whipped their asses out of the temple. So maybe Nico and Momi were bad, but not
all
bad. And even if they deserved a taste of God's smite stick, it still made my insides chung every time I flashed on Nico getting kicked, or imagined what the men had done to Momi.

As we drove, it wasn't just big worries scratching at my mental door. There was one rodent of a thought that kept skittering through the cranial walls. Why wasn't Ruah as pumped as I was about the awesome trick we'd played on the guys in our getaway? I was still catching air over it. So I asked him, “You know what made me think of the flesh-eating-disease thing?”

He shook his head. “Not a clue.”

“Remember how Huck kept the slave hunters away from Jim by telling 'em the raft was infected with smallpox?”

“Right,” he said flatly. “It was pretty smart, Billy.”

“Yeah, but what if it hadn't worked? I mean, for a second there I thought you were gonna give me to 'em.”

“I was playing it cool.”