Patrick Griffin's Last Breakfast on Earth (7 page)

“Mom!” yelled Lucie, running up to her mother.

“He's gone, he's gone, he's gone, HE'S GONE!” her mother was screaming. “Rick—THEY CAN'T FIND HIM!”

The emergency vehicles had by now shut off their sirens, leaving the damp, still air nothing to hold but the chugging of their diesels and the crackling of fuzzy-voiced dispatches. Lucie could hear her father's placating voice on the phone: it was going to be okay, he'd be there in forty minutes—he and Neil were driving back from Paramus already—there had to be a reasonable explanation.

“But THERE IS NO reasonable explanation!” Mrs. Griffin screamed. Lucie had a feeling like she was on the backside of a roller coaster incline.

“Somebody used POISON GAS and PATRICK IS
GONE
!”

“What?!” said Lucie, dropping her book and umbrella and grabbing her mother's free hand.

Mrs. Griffin looked down at her teenage daughter.

“Oh Lucie, Lucie!” she cried, dropping the phone to the grass, fresh tears spilling from her eyes. “What have I done?”

“Mom!? What happened to Patrick?”

Mary Griffin buried her face in her daughter's black hair. “I left him all alone,” she blubbered. “And he's gone. They used gas to abduct him—I'm not being hysterical—
terrorists
have taken him!”

“Mom,” said Lucie, somehow reassured by what her mother had said. There was no way terrorists had shown up in Hedgerow Heights and taken her favorite little brother, Patrick. Although it wasn't exactly like him—her brother Neil was the one more apt to do something epically moronic—he'd clearly taken advantage of getting left alone in the house and done something, well, weird. But there was no way he'd been abducted by terrorists. Probably he had burned something in the toaster oven and was now hiding, hoping to avoid trouble. Only, of course, with a fire engine, two police cars, and an ambulance—to say nothing of an emotionally traumatized mother—it was a little late for that.

“Calm down, Mom,” she said, grabbing her mother's rain- and tear-streaked face with both hands. “Patrick's totally fine. You and Dad are going to ground him for the rest of his life, I'm sure, but I promise he's perfectly safe.”

A firefighter emerged from the front door, mask tilted up over his forehead. “I think we've found a clue,” he said. “Looks like somebody did a chemistry experiment in the kitchen. Sink was full of some concoction—there were spray bottles, soaps, window cleaner, you name it, all out on the counter. So that's what set off your smoke alarm. Your son into science projects by any chance, ma'am?”

Mrs. Griffin stifled a sob and nodded.

“You see, Mom? No terrorist poison gas attack,” said Lucie. It made sense Patrick had been messing around with chemicals.

“It's true. Patrick wants to be a chemist just like his Uncle Andrew,” said Mrs. Griffin.

“Well, then,” continued the firefighter, “the little Einstein's probably hiding someplace—none of us likes trouble, do we?” The man smiled kindly and strolled off to his truck.

“You see, Mom?” asked Lucie. “That's what happened.”

“But it's not like Patrick—”

“Ma'am,” said an approaching police officer. “You left your son home at what time? Eight forty-five? It's ten twenty-five now. Give us a call if he isn't back in a couple hours, okay? Is this yours?” He retrieved her iPhone from the wet grass. It appeared to still be working.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Griffin, taking the phone. “But something
has
happened to him, I
know
it. I can
feel
it.”

“Mom, the officer's right,” said Lucie. “Patrick just went off to Dexter's or is hiding inside someplace. I'll look for him, okay? And Dad and everybody can help when they get back.”

“Meantime we'll keep our eyes peeled and—” said the policeman.

He was interrupted by a piercing wail, a horrible scream that brought goose bumps to Lucie's arms.

“What the f-f-f—” the officer started to say.

“That isn't
Patrick
, is it!?” interrupted Mrs. Griffin, her voice cracking under the weight of her fear.

The scream trailed off. It seemed to have been coming from behind the Coffin mansion next door.

“No, that was
definitely
not Patrick,” said Lucie.

“Stay right here!”
said the policeman. He began shouting instructions into his handset and took off running toward the old house.

Lucie took her mother's trembling hand.

“How do you
know
it's not Patrick, Lucie?”

“Mom, for one thing, that was clearly a
woman
's voice.”

“I guess it was.”

“And, for another, in your whole life, have you ever heard Patrick actually scream?”

Mrs. Griffin gave a grateful squeeze to her daughter's hand.

It was true—neither of them could remember Patrick screaming in his whole life—sure he'd cried as a baby, but even then he'd never really screamed. Unlike the other Griffin children, he somehow just wasn't wired for drama.

 

CHAPTER 14

Massive Multiplayer

After applying Patrick's makeup—and another dose of hand sanitizer—Kempton strapped himself into the contoured chair in the middle of the cornerless gray room and began barking commands: “Join formation, config seven, passkey November-Echo-Romeo-Delta!”

A moment later he—together with Patrick and Oma, standing behind his control chair—were skimming like a jet plane above the canopy of a canyon-fractured rain forest.

If Patrick hadn't been told it was a game, he'd have sworn that somehow the entire room had turned to glass and gone airborne. The vibrations, the detail of the trees, the clouds, the brightness of the sun—

“You're late, ABK-96,” said a nasal voice. Patrick guessed it must belong to the pilot of one of the other four slate-gray, disc-like vehicles flying in formation with them.

“You clearly haven't been checking your soash feed, D-Con Soldja,” said Kempton.

“Why would anybody be checking soash feeds during Arse-Five-Oh?”

“You going soft on us, ABK?”

Patrick wondered what the heck they were talking about—every third word they said he'd never heard before—but they were taking this all very seriously and he decided he shouldn't interrupt.

“We'll see who's going soft,” retorted Kempton. “First I'll kick all your butts and then—while you're waiting to respawn—you'll learn that the reason I was late was that my feed happened to go
viral
.”

“Wha-at?” said one incredulous voice.

“Ri-ight,” said another.

“The only reason,” said a third, “that your feed will ever go viral, ABK, is if you have such an epic fail that it rips a hole in the fabric of the universe.”

“Whatever you belties say,” replied Kempton.

A bat-winged, eagle-headed, lion-bodied creature with reptilian forelegs exploded from the forest canopy like a shark leaping from the ocean—a shark that could fly at what looked to be two hundred miles per hour.

With one, two, three powerful wing strokes, it launched itself at the underbelly of the nearest slate-gray sky-car, raking the craft with scimitar-like claws. The eviscerated vehicle angled toward the left horizon with a trail of smoke and a tapering scream.

Patrick inserted his index fingers into his ears as the hideous creature let out a blood-curdling shriek and plunged back into the forest canopy.

A series of interlocking metal hoops now emerged from the floor around Kempton's chair, enabling it to detach from its pedestal and pitch, roll, and spin with his piloted surroundings.

“What
is
this?” Patrick said to Oma.

“I think it's called Abomination Redress Squad 5D.”

The room slanted violently as Kempton dove. Instinctively Patrick shifted to his left foot and found himself waving his arms for balance. With a gentle laugh, Oma grabbed his shoulder to steady him.

Kempton meantime landed his sky-car in the forest. The game view shifted abruptly to third person—his helmeted, flight-suited avatar appeared before them, exiting the sky-car as the real-world Kempton undid his safety harness and climbed out of his chair. The pivoting rings folded themselves back down into the floor.

“Are
all
games like this?” Patrick asked Oma.

“Well,” she whispered into his ear, “for Kempton's demographic, most are actually pretty much
exactly
like this. The chance for young males to safely indulge in senseless acts of violence has been a wonderful boon to worldwide order and not a small part of the Deacons' success. Keeps young men off the streets and, at the same time, ensures the government a constantly renewing crop of well-trained young soldiers. Should they ever need them.”

Patrick looked at Oma to see if she was being serious. She certainly seemed to be.

Kempton's muscle-bound character was now running through the forest at superhuman speed—veering left, dodging right, jumping rocks, ducking limbs. Blue vector lines blinked ahead, and a shimmering yellow-orange-red series of blotches began to grow.

“I got him on Mo-Rez!” he shouted as the blotches coalesced into what was shortly recognizable as a four-legged, two-winged lion-shaped creature bounding, banking, and generally sprinting for its life through the vine-draped forest.

“S-R-Sitzen, D-Con Soldja, get ready—keep that trash locked down. I'm going hot!”

Kempton's gun exploded to life, mowing down the vegetation as he closed in on the fleeing monster.

Torn leaves swirled, and widening shafts of smoke-filled sunlight opened all around.

“I feel carsick,” said Patrick to Oma.

“Try to keep an eye on the horizon.”

Patrick couldn't see any horizon, just churning forest. It was like being inside a salad spinner.

The creature's digitized orange shape had been growing increasingly yellow, and now nearly white as Kempton closed in.

“All. Most. There,” Kempton said, and then: “Disengage Mo-Rez!” The blotchy shapes disappeared and they could now see—maybe fifty yards distant—actual glimpses of the creature as it madly scrambled through the forest, banging into trees, leaping ditches, plowing through thickets.

And then it was gone.

“What the heck?! Any of you got him?! Where'd he go?”

“I dunno,” said a particularly twerpy voice. “Sensors are dark.”

“Engage Residual-Sensitivity I.R.!” Kempton screamed.

The world around them became a green-gray realm inhabited by spots of blue, purple, red, orange, and yellow—most of which seemed to be on the ground. Patrick realized these must be the creature's paw- and claw-prints.

Kempton inclined his head toward the glowing footprints and, the room's view bobbing as he walked, followed them right up to where they disappeared in a quivering thicket of brambles.

A waist-high, violet-streaked black area appeared on his sensors.

“There's a cave behind these bushes!” yelled Kempton.

“Could be a trap!” shouted one of his buddies.

“Could be a full-on lair!” shouted another.

“There could be dozens of them down there—wait for backup!” yelled a third.

“And give you guys point-share?” snorted Kempton. “Yeah, I'll just sit and eat a BLK till you catch up.”

“Don't be stupid, ABK-96, wait for us—”

Kempton didn't wait.

*   *   *

The only other time in his life Patrick had seen something that had actually, physically made him want to throw up had been the day Neil and his friends had taken him to see a road-killed fawn on Old Post Road.

Neil and especially his six-foot-tall, chinless friend Andrew Shandler were kings of gross-out—forever flicking boogers at each other, making jokes about dead nuns, reveling in their ability to turn enemy soldiers into clouds of “pink mist” in Call of Duty and the other military video games they played. So it probably wasn't surprising that they had shown great interest in the rapidly bloating carcass. Still, the worst any of them had done was poke the animal's eye with a stick.

Patrick reminded himself this was just a video game—and a video game within a dream at that—but the realization didn't stop the cloying taste of maple syrup from creeping up into his throat.

Kempton, having tracked down and single-handedly killed the monster—
the abomination
, as they called it—had just finished using his combat knife to saw off one of the creature's clawed toes for a trophy. His friends wanted more.

“Stick a frag in its mouth!” yelled one.

“Yeah, that'll open it up!” observed another.

“That'll only explode its head,” said Kempton.

“Try its anus!”

“You are sick in the head, D-Con,” replied Kempton, placing his boot on the edge of the creature's gaping neck wound.