Apocalypse - Keith R. A. DeCandido [11]
Mr. Strunk stepped forward. “Look, I can’t just let some strange men walk into my homeroom and take one of my students.”
The second man reached into the inner pocket of his gray suit’s jacket and pulled out a piece of paper, then handed it to Mr. Strunk.
Mr. Strunk read it. His big moustache drooped as he did so.
“All right, fine,” the teacher said, handing the piece of paper back to the second man in the gray suit.
The first man still had his hand out to Angela.
“C’mon, Angie, we have to go.”
“Yeah, Angie, we have to go,” said Bobby Bernstein. His friends giggled.
Angela muttered, “I hope you die, Bobby Bernstein.”
It was too quiet for anyone to hear—except for Dana, who gave Angela a smile.
Dana didn’t like Bobby Bernstein either.
Clutching the Spider-Man lunchbox to her chest as the men in the gray suits led her out into the school hallway, Angela asked, “Where’re we going?”
“You’ll see, Angie.”
Angela didn’t think that was much of an answer.
They went out the school’s front door, which was supposed to be locked after homeroom started.
But if these two men were from the company Daddy worked for, it wouldn’t be the first time they’d done something they weren’t supposed to.
In fact, they weren’t supposed to take her out of class like that. But they got Mr. Strunk to let them do it.
She held the lunchbox tighter to her chest.
A big black car was parked on the street in front of the school, right under the red sign that said NO STANDING ANYTIME.
There was no ticket on the car.
Angela knew something bad was happening.
Was Daddy sick? Was she sick? Had they found out something bad about Daddy?
Or was it something even worse?
The second man in the gray suit opened the car’s side door. The car was so big, Angela had to climb into it like it was a stepladder. She almost dropped the lunchbox.
Angela sat in the backseat while the two men sat in the two front seats.
“Let’s boogie,” the one in the passenger seat said.
“Why do you always say that?”
“Say what?”
“ ‘Let’s boogie.’ It’s stupid.”
“Will you just drive the fucking car?”
“Hey, language! There’s a kid in the backseat.”
“Fine, will you just drive the freaking car, then? Sheesh.”
The big black car pulled out onto Hudson Avenue, heading past Robertson Street toward Main Street. Main Street was just what the name said it was: the main street in Raccoon City. Actually, there were a lot of big streets in the city, but Daddy had explained that in the old days, Main was the only big one. Now there were other big ones, like Shadeland Boulevard and Johnson Avenue and Mabius Road, but Main Street was still one of the most important ones.
The man in the gray suit who was driving was still talking as he drove down Hudson Avenue.
“Have you ever actually ‘boogied’ a day in your life?”
“Why are we still having this conversation?”
“Well? Have you?”
“Jesus, Howie, it’s an expression. Haven’t you ever used an expression in your life?”
“Sure, but I like to use ones that have some basis in reality, y’know?”
“It does have a basis in reality. Boogie is a type of dancing. Dancing is a type of moving. We need to move. It’s just a variation on ‘let’s get moving.’ ”
“So why don’t you just say, ‘Let’s get moving’?”
“ ‘Let’s boogie’ has fewer syllables.”
“Oh, I get it—you’re a card-carrying member of the Society for the Prevention of Syllable Overuse. Paid your dues this month?”
“Y’know, when my wife gets like this, I assume she’s on the rag. What the hell’s your excuse?”
The driver neared the big red stop sign at the corner of Hudson and Main, but wasn’t slowing down. “I just don’t see what saying ‘Let’s boogie’ has to do with what we’ve been doing, especially since you don’t boogie.”
“How the hell do you know I don’t boogie? Have you ever been with me in a situation where I might be dancing?”
Angela looked out the window on her right. She saw a large truck driving straight down Main Street.
Driving very fast down Main Street.
The man in the gray suit who was driving was still talking about boogieing. He had not stopped at the