Chapter 8: Run for the Border

“ANYTHING YOU’D LIKE to tell me about that little display at Customs?” I asked Princess. “Diplomatic passport?”

“Every member of the Sovereign family has a diplomatic passport,” she replied. I waited. At the crossing, Misty and I had been relegated to the position of escorts for the royal brat. Finally, she sighed. “Mother was afraid you’d have trouble crossing the border, even with bearer passports. Maybe even because of the bearer passports. They aren’t recognized everywhere. She thought if I was with you, they’d just wave us through.”

“So, your mother was actually in on you stowing away and was really the one who signed your permission slip?” I asked.

“Yes. Did you think it was a forgery?” Princess asked, as if she was far above doing such a thing.

“It seemed suspicious and not very neatly put together.”

“We were in a hurry.”

“Fine. Let’s see if your charm will get us through the border back into Victoriana. I assume that’s where we’re going,” I said.

“The south crossing is a hundred miles from here. I’m going to sleep.” Princess closed her eyes tightly and leaned back against the window. Shasta had abandoned Misty and lay in Princess’s lap with Roadkill leaning his head against her. I reminded myself that she was only fifteen and I should make allowances for her being a kid.

Then I started to laugh. Misty looked at me strangely, but I couldn’t even form a response to her question, “What?” I was only eighteen! If I was supposed to make allowances for a fifteen-year-old, who was making allowances for me? And the more I thought about Misty being the responsible adult among us, the funnier it got. I just shook my head and laughed.

I pressed the accelerator a little more firmly and our speed climbed toward ninety.

“I’ve got it,” Misty said as we raced down the road. This was by no means a superhighway. It was marked with two lanes, but we’d met no oncoming traffic. I’d passed a couple of slow moving vehicles, though.

“What’cha got?” I asked. I loved the feel of the muscle car now that I had let the horses out to run. It was made for this.

“The Belt and Sword of Truth,” Misty said, holding the book of weapons open in her lap. She’d been researching what each of my weapons could do. We’d soon discovered that everything I wore was a weapon of some sort.

“That’s not like that other Terry Goodkind book is it? That was so bloody. How many heads did that guy cut off?”

“Too many. But no. This is more like the biblical belt of truth and sword of the spirit. When the two are together, anyone who touches the hilt of the sword is compelled to tell the truth. You can place a person’s hand on the hilt and as long as it’s in the scabbard and attached to the belt, they have to answer any question truthfully. If the sword is out of the scabbard, it is able to detect deceit but not compel the truth.”

“Well, that explains that,” I said with finality. If it was the sword and belt I’d been given that compelled the border guard to tell the truth about why we were stopped, then it wasn’t my eyes. Except for one niggling detail. When he grabbed my sword and looked in my eyes, he’d blurted out everything we needed to know and let us through. But I’d never asked him a question.

Mile 643

Traffic picked up both directions as crossroads became more frequent and we entered the outskirts of Anavic. Apparently, that was supposed to be a combination of Anatnomia and Victoriana—the border town. Misty was studying the TripTik but hadn’t offered any directions, so I just kept on the main drag as traffic became downright congested. I saw a sign that said ‘Pepe’s Best Tacos’ and swung off the street into a Mexican restaurant kind of place.

“Potty break. Let’s have tacos for lunch,” I said. Princess woke up and the animals stretched. Sorry. Didn’t mean to make it sound like Princess was an animal. I don’t think.

“Here! We’re supposed to stop here,” Misty said.

“Why no directions until after I was already parked?” I asked.

“It was doing stupid stuff,” Misty complained. What kind of stupid stuff can a paper map do? “I’d start to say turn right, and the instructions would fade out. I’d look around and there was no place to turn. Then it would say stop here and there’d be no place to stop. It just all of a sudden settled with the words, ‘Eat here.’”

“Maybe it only works in Victoriana,” Princess volunteered. “The border shifts around a lot.”

We traipsed into the little taco restaurant and I was pleased to find it was a real Mexican taco place like you’d get out of a truck on the sidewalk instead of a fast food taco place like the one that can’t decide if it’s tacos or fried chicken or pizza. It had a spicy smell that set my stomach rumbling.

“Your order?” The guy at the counter was looking at the emblem on my chest.

“Warrior Wizard,” I answered. He looked up at me uncertainly.

“Warrior Wizard special!” he called to the kitchen. I waved Princess and Misty up to the counter and they ordered things that were actually on the menu. Misty shoved a card in the reader and the counter guy pushed a button to give her a receipt.

“Uh ... Is this usual traffic out here?” I asked, looking out the front window at the long line of cars.

“Oh, sometimes. The border’s closed and the army has traffic backed up for miles,” he said.

“Why is it closed?” I asked.

“Oh, you know. Someone on one side farted and the other side thought they were shooting, so they stopped all the traffic and lined up on either side of the crossing with guns pointing at each other.”

“Oh, Pepe, that story is as old as I am,” Princess laughed.

“That may be,” he said, “but now every time someone raises a stink at the border, we say it’s closed because of farts. Sometimes it applies to the people in authority. Doesn’t make any sense otherwise.” A bell rang and he brought back our plates of food.

“What is this?” I asked, looking at the huge tortilla-wrapped roll on my plate.

“Warrior Wizard special: A super-size grande shredded pork and beans burrito,” the proprietor said. I usually try not to eat anything bigger than my head, but this ... I was going to take a stab at it. I cut a bite off it and savored the spicy meat and beans. “Four pounds,” the proprietor stated proudly. This was going to take a while.

We finished our meal and I discovered my plate was empty. I’d even sopped up the extra sauce and cheese from my plate with another tortilla. I leaned back in my chair and looked out the window again, thinking maybe it was time for a siesta before we got back in line.

“Is there another way across the border?” I asked as he picked up our plates.

“Oh, sure. It’s not legal, exactly.”

“How exactly?”

“Well, my clientele comes from both sides of the border for Pepe’s Best Tacos. So, all you really have to do is drive out the back of my parking lot and you’re across the border.”

“That easy? There’s no fence?”

“They try to make me put up a fence. Why would I do that? I’d lose half my business. And if they want a fence, they can pay for it. I’m not paying to put a fence across my parking lot and prevent people from coming for my tacos.” I looked at my companions. Even Shasta seemed to raise an eyebrow at me.

“Time to roll,” I said.

We left the restaurant and piled into the Fairlane. True enough, there was no fence and the drainage ditch that marked the border was scarcely a depression as big as a speed bump. Once through the parking lot. Misty looked at the TripTik and pointed left. I turned right.

Mile 651

It took an hour to get out of town. The traffic on this side of the border was backed up just as far, so we had to drive the wrong direction until we could make a turn and come back on a side street, then weave around a couple of traffic circles and into a residential neighborhood, before I could get pointed the right direction and pick up where the TripTik showed us.

By that time, we were all feeling the effects of the huge meal we ate.

“I need a bathroom,” Princess said.

“Me, too,” I answered. “I’ll find one as soon as possible.”

“And Roadkill just farted,” she continued. I rolled down my window.

“Quick! Close the border,” Misty laughed. Then she groaned as the smell reached the front seat. She quickly rolled down her window. Shasta jumped over the seat onto her lap and stuck her nose out the window.

As luck would have it, there was a park at the edge of Victanat, the sister city of Anavic. I pulled in and we all headed for the bathrooms, suggesting that Roadkill find someplace far away to do his business. When we’d all gathered back at the car, I opened the hatch and Misty pulled soft drinks from the cooler. There was a ball court nearby, so I grabbed my basketball and strolled over to shoot a few hoops. I was holding my Shasta Creme Soda in one hand while I launched the basketball with the other and dropped it through the hoop. Princess and Misty were lounging against the car with Shasta and Roadkill prowling around looking for gophers.

When it comes down to it, all I really want to do is play roundball. This Warrior Wizard stuff was getting old and I was truly considering waking myself up. It all had to be a dream, right? I guess I just got lost in the moment because the next thing I heard was a scream from near the car. I spun and saw four guys in dark suits grabbing Misty and Princess. I palmed the basketball and pitched it as hard as I could. I hit the guy on my left and he went reeling backward into the parking lot. Shasta and Roadkill were on top of the other guy and Misty was free. I turned toward Princess just in time to see her shoved in the back of a van by one guy. The other had disappeared.

I didn’t even hesitate. I pulled my mortarboard off my head and used a side-arm throw. It lodged just below his ribs and he fell to the ground as the van door slid closed and he peeled out of the parking lot. As I ran toward the Fairlane, I scooped the basketball up off the ground. I could see the guy I’d knocked down was the big burly guy who threatened us at the hotel in East Love. The side of his face looked more like I’d thrown a burning bowling ball at him than a basketball. I spent a whole second trying to feel sorry for him. The other guy, still cowering in a fetal position while Shasta paced around him, had a patch over one eye. Misty opened her car door and got in. Shasta leapt into her lap and she slammed the door shut. I ran to the other side of the car and when I opened the door, Roadkill trotted up with my mortarboard and jumped in the back seat. I tossed the basketball in with him.

I handed the cap to Misty and turned the ignition. When the big engine roared to life, I popped the clutch and we spun out of the parking lot in hot pursuit of the van. I could see it half a mile ahead of us. Misty wiped the blood off the corner of my hat and handed it back to me, then calmly opened the TripTik.

“We won’t need that as long as I can see that SOB ahead of us,” I said. Misty laughed. “What?” I barked.

“The TripTik just says, ‘Follow that van!’”

“Great. Now we have a smartass paper GPS.” I pressed the accelerator almost to the floor and we started closing the distance to the van.

Mile 670

We had come down from a mountain pass getting into Anatnomia. It looked like the route into Victoriana was up and over the mountains again. The road was twisting and switched back on itself at times so tightly that I could see the van out my side window as it passed on the next curve. There was only so much speed I could pour on here. The van couldn’t do better. I could see it lean dangerously around a curve as it was.

“Does this road ever straighten out?” I called to Misty.

“This shows a half-mile straight stretch up to the pass and another half-mile on the other side. Then it gets all twisty again.”

I rounded the next curve and saw the straightaway in front of me and floored the Fairlane. It responded by jumping ahead and in a second or two, I was beside the van and Valentine Caesar was looking out in terror. There was a rest area viewpoint at the top of the pass and I moved the Fairlane into the side of the van to force it off the road and into the park. It bumped over a curb and came to rest against a picnic table. I stopped a little less suddenly and we piled out of the car. Before we got to the van, Valentine was standing beside it with Princess in his grasp and a knife held to her throat.