Alex Van Helsing The Triumph of Death - By Jason Henderson Page 0,64
attention of a couple of the agents.
Carreras came back. “So? You thought about it?”
“I can’t stay,” Alex said. “Good luck.”
“Alex, what do you mean? Are you going home or to the school or what?”
Alex started to roll the bike, past the other parked motorcycles, and then they were cruising past a maintenance crew working on a Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
“Good luck, sir.”
Alarm bells erupted as the time for a negligent agent to return the tablet to the library lapsed and a full theft was assumed. Now Alex saw cameras in the hangar swivel and point at him as he throttled the Triumph and picked up speed, heading to the start of the exit ramp. It was half a mile to the surface.
“Hey!” shouted a guard near the entrance. “Stop!”
Alex saluted as Astrid held on and they began to move up the ramp, which was wide enough for a pair of tanks. He saw gun emplacements swiveling and he watched the cameras. Surely they wouldn’t shoot him. Right?
“Where are you going, Alex?” the voice sounded in his helmet.
“If you pay attention, you’ll know.”
“Alex!” called Astrid. He could barely hear her over the roar of the engine. “Why not just throw the tablet away?”
“Because I want them to know!” he shouted. “They’re giving up and I want them to know!” Alex pointed up ahead, where a closed garage door about a half mile away slowly grew larger. “Can you open that door?” He looked over his shoulder at Astrid. “Like now?”
Astrid brought up her staff and reached it around him. She screamed something he didn’t understand. Now he heard the sounds of other engines behind them. There was a flash from the end of her staff, and Alex saw the door warp for a second. She called again, something with thick consonants that he couldn’t make out, and then he heard, “Open.”
The door swung open an inch or two and they were still zooming toward it. “It’s protected against magic.”
“I’m not stopping, do you hear me, sir? I’m not stopping.”
The British voice sounded curious. “Oh? Where are you going?”
“Scotland. Are you going to stop me because you don’t want me stealing a computer?”
“Just turn around and we’ll talk about it.”
“Talk about it? I am doing your job, sir!” Alex called. “Are you people insane? You’re falling back to babysitting a vampire apocalypse? No.”
Alex looked back at the line of motorcycles and a truck behind him. An agent was hanging out of the side of the truck with a machine gun.
“I am going to hit this door at sixty miles an hour,” said Alex. “And I’m gonna be jelly, but you know what? You’ll have a door to fix, and your defenses will be damaged, and you’ll have vampires coming in your front door under permanent nightfall.”
The door was looming. Alex sped up.
“You won’t get far, Alex,” came the response, and the door swung open, heavy and fast, and he burst through the exit into the night and the woods.
The motorcycles followed him as he shot through the trees, keeping their distance, watching. “They have no idea what we’re doing,” Alex said.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Astrid shouted.
Alex veered around a tree and zipped onto the road to Secheron village. After a moment he heard a new sound, a helicopter zooming in overhead. A searchlight opened up and surrounded them, so they cast a long shadow on the road.
“You want me to take out the helicopter, maybe damage it a little?”
Alex waved his arm. “No! For Pete’s sake, there’s no such thing as damaging a helicopter a little. And besides, that’s not the Polidorium.” He looked back and saw that his Polidorium escorts were still behind him, though. Alex waved at the helicopter, signaling Up ahead and left.
Alex headed another quarter mile up the road, and then veered off near a clearing, a soccer field. With a loud, chutting sound of rotor blades, the helicopter chased past them and then swiveled in the field, dropping down and hanging a few inches off the deck.
“Okay.” Alex ground the bike to a halt and hopped off, tossing his helmet. “Come on.”
“Whose helicopter is that?” They were running across the field now.
As they drew closer, Alex saw a huge red cross on the side of the chopper and the blazing words BRINGING HEALTH AND KNOWLEDGE TO THE WORLD.
The pilot, whom Alex didn’t know, waved at him and Astrid as they scrambled into the side door of the chopper.