us. We’d better start calling everyone and get them here as quickly as possible. We’re going to need some strength if we’re going to kill these bastards!”
Will gulped.
Tony held out his hand to shake Will’s. “Proper introductions then, and gratitude for services in the line of fire. Tony Wayne, General. Welcome to the quest, for what it’s worth. I almost feel bad for you.”
“Ah, what?” was all Will could say as he squinted at Tony.
Nate stood and did likewise, shaking Will’s hand. “Nathanael Greene, pleased to meet you.”
Will remarked with intensifying stupor, “Uh, William Mith.”
Wayne grabbed the empty glasses off the table, and walked over to a bar in the corner. For the first time, Will noticed the room, which was richly adorned for a basement. Treads were worn into the brick floor; it seemed people had walked the same paths for centuries. On the paneled walls hung minutely detailed parade sabers, gleaming with fresh polish. The long plank table was surrounded by sturdy wooden chairs, similar to those in Independence Hall.
“Let’s have another round,” Greene suggested. “Sit down and let’s figure this out. It must have been fate that we are here at exactly the same time, just like Will intervening earlier.”
“Yeah, yeah, mysterious ways,” Wayne said, still standing by the bar. “Are you up to speed yet, Will?”
Wayne poured four drinks and lifted them up, spilling a little beer on the floor, slammed one on the table and forcibly pushed Will into a chair in front of the ale. He slapped Will again on the back, sat next to him and distributed the other glasses out to his comrades.
“Up to speed?” Will stuttered. “I don’t even know where we are.”
“Private room under City Tavern, you know, secret passage from Ben’s house to escape the Brits during the war? He owns the place,” Wayne said candidly through his intensifying buzz.
Will cocked his head slightly at him, and then looked at Ben who rolled his eyes.
“It’s a dramatic beginning to the quest, but I suppose that’s the only way to do it,” Greene stated.
“Quest?” Will asked.
Wayne and Greene tilted their heads in unison. Then they glared at Franklin who sipped his beer, pretending to be distraught and ignorant of the conversation.
“Ben, what have you told Will?” Greene asked.
“Hmm?” Franklin stalled, “Uh, well I sort of…haven’t. We haven’t gotten that far yet.”
“Good Lord,” Greene said glumly.
Wayne began to laugh lightly, huffing under his breath. The glass rose to his lips, but the laughter got drunkenly stronger. He snickered over the beer, attempting to drink it, but having to put it down between bouts. Eventually he laughed openly, with mounting vociferousness. Nate closed his eyes and shook his head. Ben looked sheepishly at the both of them.
“Too late to turn back now, thanks Tony,” Greene accused.
“That’s what I get for opening my mouth,” Wayne stated with forced clarity through the alcohol.
“Thought you would have figured that out by now,” Greene scolded.
“If you want to know the truth about a person, buy them a drink,” Wayne said with a chuckle.
Greene said with further annoyance, “Precisely how much has the young man witnessed?”
“Too much,” Franklin said.
“Too much,” Will echoed before Franklin could finish.
“Too much to be an accident,” Franklin elaborated to reassure Will. “I just wasn’t quite sure how to proceed.”
Greene massaged his temples. “Then the floor is yours.”
Franklin started slowly. “Will, do you remember during the tour, a woman asked me where I sat during the congress? No historian in the world could possibly be sure of the answer to that question. Do you know why I know it?”
Will remained motionless.
“I know it, because I am Ben Franklin.”
One errant eyebrow tugged Will’s features upwards. In anticipation of a punch line, he began to smile a little as his head cocked to the side. However, as Franklin’s grimace deepened in response, Will’s smile turned into a worried stare.
He Who Knows Best Knows How Little He Knows
Emerging awkwardly from the cellar stairs and into the main dining room of City Tavern, an expressionless Will stood observing the bustling staff. His face was glazed over, pasted with a pale stupor. Both hands twitched incessantly, clawing at his pockets for support. He lurched out with an unsure step. The basement door swung closed behind him, leaving him exposed to the crowd. A nearby server eyed him cautiously, but Will didn’t flinch. Idly, he moved over the creaky hallway boards.
“Hello,” the server said. “Can I help you?”
Will turned to her with as much deathly purpose as a zombie. Her words blew past him, incoherent. He blinked, turned and continued to falter towards the exit. A few others stopped to mark the phantom struck young man, making way for him and receiving no acknowledgement in return.
The beating heat signaled that he was clear of the restaurant. The din died behind as the door shut. Will gripped the railing on the steps, and eventually leaned his full weight against it as his brain rebooted. Sweat beaded on his forehead as his internal temperature rose to match the weather.
A few errant car horns and jack hammers finally brought him back to the present. A shiver in his neck snapped his head up. The bad feelings leaked out his ears, and intelligible thoughts returned. Blandly analyzing his surroundings, he pointed himself in the direction of home and bumbled towards the corner.
On the other side of the intersection, Will’s pace hastened as the absurdity of the information he’d just received morphed into a paranoid sense of danger. It caused him to look back over his shoulder several times at the ancient tippling place. He tried to regulate his hasty stride, though he felt the overwhelming urge to run from the ridiculousness. Waves of panic repeatedly surged in his feet, causing startled hops and leaps from curbs without looking for traffic.
Will carried on his jittery walk for a few more blocks until the neighborhood began to look more modern and he emerged from Old City. When he came to the edge of a larger thoroughfare, he began to settle a bit. The comforting sounds of the hectic arterial corridor buzzed around him. He had never been so relieved to see the unnavigable deluge of cars and people. A group of medical professionals crowded around him and waited for the light to change. Just as it did, Will stepped off the sidewalk.
A set of screeching brakes pierced the air, shrilly eliminating the city sounds as a windowless white van came to a bucking halt. The vehicle hissed as its tires dug into the asphalt, sending Will springing from its path.
His already spent nerves unraveled with the restrained jerk of the van’s bumper just a foot from his knees. Will stared through the windshield into the darkened interior. A group of tinted faces leaned over to peer back out at him. Locked in visual combat, Will could tell that the vehicle’s occupants twisted their heads with some notion of curiosity. Will disengaged and jogged out of the van’s way to cross over to the other side of the median.
He turned to look back. The van had straightened its course. Instead of turning as it previously meant to do, its trajectory had been adjusted to follow Will. It crept through the intersection and pulled over at the corner behind him.
Will whipped back around and sped down the sidewalk as the van’s engine roared a few yards back. He pushed past a maze of lazy pedestrians in his way and reached the next corner. Looking back again, Will noticed the van hadn’t moved nor had anyone disembarked. It stood, waiting at the curb, its contents obscured by the glaring sunlight outside.
He heard the motor rev up as he crossed the next street. It sputtered to a haggard start, matched Will’s speed and pursued him through the intersection. It pulled over again at the corner behind him, and paused with menacing vibrato.
Will loosed his athleticism, shimmying between a pair of suited businesswomen under the traffic light, ne
arly knocking the coffee out of their hands. At the risk of looking like he was escaping a crime, he accelerated to as close to a run as he could without both feet leaving the ground. Will cut around the next corner and out of sight.
Concealed by the outcropping of a subway stop, he jogged up the next half block. Reaching the edge of a bar’s clutter of street-side tables, Will mixed into the drinking populace. He dodged around the flow of people that perched on high stools, but unfortunately still stood a few inches above the majority. Once past the spirited happy hour, he gazed back again.
The white van rounded the building in Will’s trail, sustaining its vigilance at a block’s distance. At a vacant spot on the sidewalk, it pulled up and waited. No hazards blinked on, no doors opened, and no attempt at commerce was made that might explain the vehicle’s storage capacity. It simply stopped and watched Will scurry down the street.
He turned again at the next corner. Having to dash by the exodus of a pharmacy, and weave through a stream of cars that pulled out of a parking garage, Will’s calves anxiously stretched for the next crossing point. They pulled him to his street, within just a few more blocks of home. His fists began to pump, and he sailed openly over the uprooted pavement of the avenue up to his house. He didn’t stop to look back this time. He cruised ahead, seeking the fastest possible escape of the apparition of surveillance.
The stewing humidity was getting to him now, dampening his shirt and binding it up around his