Frederik Sandwich and the Earthquake that Couldn't Possibly Be by Kevin John Scott

Author:Kevin John Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2017-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Guru

“Is he following?”

“Watch out!”

Crash.

Pernille ran into a poorly parked bicycle, toppled it over, fell across it, became entirely entangled, and spent precious seconds getting free of the wreckage.

“You’re attracting attention!” Frederik worried, scanning the street for the tramp, pursuers, police.

“Why is he following us?”

“He isn’t. He can’t be. It doesn’t make sense.”

“He knows we know!” she said. “He saw us reading those newspapers. The ones he doctored. He saw us getting on that train. He knows we know too much! He needs us silenced. Eliminated.”

“Watch out, Pernille. Pernille, watch out!”

Bicycles tore through the intersection, fizzing by, scarves flying. A hundred homeward-bound Saturday shoppers with packed baskets. Pernille was engulfed in a cloud of fast-moving metal and legs. Bells clattered; voices were raised. “Get out the way! Look out! Watch your back!”

She pirouetted, arms flailing, white hair lashing like the sweeping arc of light about a lighthouse. She lunged for safety, curses ringing and pedals clanking and her coat all twisted and confused.

He hauled her clear of the onslaught to the safety of the sidewalk. Her grip was firm and cold and frightened.

“Look where you’re going! You could have been hurt.”

The traffic lights changed and the river of mayhem screeched and swerved to a halt.

“Come on,” he told her. They made it across alive and raced along the narrow street. Homes and apartments hemmed them in on either side, six floors high.

She grabbed his arm. “Who’s that?”

“Who’s who?”

“Back there by the crossing. It’s him! He’s coming!”

The tramp was bludgeoning through the bicycle traffic, oblivious to the complaints.

“We must save ourselves!” she wailed. “Before we’re cruelly silenced by that butcher.”

They ran down the street, the busy flea market ahead—a crowd they could hide among. But just as they readied themselves to sprint across the street, Frederik realized: Municipal Hall! They would be visible from every window of Municipal Hall in broad daylight, and every department of Municipal Hall was on the lookout for them!

“Stop!” he yelped. They froze, exposed, at the door of the Ramasubramanian Superstore. Municipal Hall loomed like a vast cliff no more than fifty yards away. “We forgot the proof. We left the paper behind.”

“You again,” said Venkatamahesh Ramasubramanian, spilling out in front of them. “I have almost entirely undamaged confectionery for polite children,” he told Pernille. “I have nothing whatsoever for ignorant boys like him.”

Frederik twisted around in panic. The tramp was still coming, marching doggedly. “Please,” he said. “Let me apologize. I was unforgivably rude. I know that. Let me apologize in here!” And he grabbed Pernille, tugging her through the door and into the cool of the shabby little shop.

They threw themselves to the floor behind battered boxes and broken cookies. The floor was sticky. A refrigerator buzzed unhappily. So did the shopkeeper, glaring down at them, hands on hips.

Frederik peered between the shopkeeper’s legs, toward the open door. A bus rolled by. A bicycle. Another. He barely dared breathe. Pernille folded her ungainly frame between his shoulder and the shelf. “Do you see the tramp?” she whispered.

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