Bently McQuinn Saves Literature

Bently opened his eyes to trees.

“Not another forest,” he groaned. He had had enough of freaking forests. Everything bad seemed to happen in them.

“Not for long,” said Meggie, pointing a head of her. The trees ended not to far away, and there was a little house with a slightly broken fence around it.

“I hope that’s where we need to be,” Lucy said as they started for the house. “I’m really tired.”

“Martinez and Jeb told me they would be at the house,” King said. “So I can only assume they meant this house.”

They all stumbled up to the front door. Right as they reached it, it swung open. Everyone who had them went for their weapons, but they stopped when Bently recognized the owner and relaxed. It was the Spanish woman how had been in the Great Hall, and behind her was the man with the mustache who had been with her.

“Dr. Martinez, nice to see you haven’t been taken over,” said King.

“Hello Stephen, Bently. Please, come in, you look dead on your feet,” she invited, smiling kindly. They all stumbled gratefully inside.

The house was small, but Bently had to admit it was charming. Dr. Martinez shuffled around, trying to find places for everyone to rest. “Girls, you can go in Ella’s room, it’s just down there, she’s at school. Stephen, take my bed, and Bently, here’s some blankets if you want the couch or the spare bed...”

“I’ll take the couch, thanks,” said Bently, accepting the blankets and stepping towards the plush couch. He took of his cloak and weapons, laying them carefully on the floor next to the couch so he could snatch them up at a moments notice.

“Sure beats sleeping in a tree,” he commented before closing his eyes. Despite it being noon, he fell asleep in moments.

-

Bently awoke when Lucy shook him. “Dinner’s ready, Bently,” she said gently before leaving. Bently yawned and stretched, a slight kink in his neck. It had only been a few hours sleep, but it had been of deep sleep, and Bently felt like once he was fully awake, he might be able to go for another night. Or day. Or several, if need be.

He walked in the kitchen to see everyone just starting to fill their plates with delicious smelling food. Seated at the table were Dr. Martinez, the mustached man, and a girl, who looked a little younger than Meggie and Lucy.

“So, what’s going on in this book?” King asked, forking up a load of chicken. Bently grabbed his own food and stood next to King while Lucy and Meggie took the final seats at the small table.

“Rosalie has taken over the flock and the Erasers,” said the man. “They’re in the School, and she’s locked Max away somewhere. If you could break Max out, she would help you defeat Rosalie.”

“Where is this… School?” Bently asked. He really didn’t want to go back to school. “And what is it?”

“The School is the science lab where I used to work,” said the man. It irked Bently that he still didn’t know his name. “And it’s also where Max and the flock were made. You see, the School was experimenting on crossing human DNA with other animals, and when we crossed humans with birds, we got the flock. It’s a wonder Rosalie got the flock to follow her, because they hate it there.”

He stood, finished with his dinner. “Tomorrow, we’ll set off for it. But you should all rest some more, I’ve been told you haven’t had rest in almost two days.”

-

Bently slept very soundly that night. The next morning, he awoke refreshed, and actually took a shower. It wasn’t until he climbed in did he realize how dirty and nasty he was, and it took him a good fifteen minutes just to scrub all the grime and dried blood of various species off himself. It wouldn’t last for very long, but he might as well be clean while he could.

He found the others in the kitchen. Dr. Martinez handed him a plate of bacon, eggs, and toast. “Stephen said your notebook got eaten by dinosaurs, so I went and found you two new ones. They’re by your things.” She said this like dinosaurs eating notebooks was the most ordinary thing in the world.

“Thank you,” Bently said between large bites of breakfast.

“Jeb will be back soon, he just wanted to make sure there was plenty of gas in the van,” she said.

“We’re going in a van?” Meggie said, looking relieved to not have to walk for this one.

“What’s a van?” Lucy asked, confused.

“It’s a really big automobile that can carry lots of people,” Meggie explained. “Are we really driving?”

“Yes. Jeb thinks they won’t suspect it, and it’s easier to get to the School in a vehicle, anyways.”

Jeb, the mustache man, returned just as everyone was finishing packing up. “Alright, load up and move out,” he instructed, and they did. They looked a comical sight, throwing swords and cloaks into the back of a van. Jeb was driving with King in the passenger seat, and Meggie sat between Lucy and Bently. Dr. Martinez set a bag of groceries into the back as well.

“For the road,” she said. “And please, be careful.”

“We will,” Bently assured her, while hiding his gimp hand from her sight. He didn’t think she would find losing a finger the definition of “careful.”

And then they were off. Bently had to admit, this was a lot better than walking to the School. He didn’t even know where they were, or where this School was, but it must have been far from Dr. Martinez’s house.

“Do we have a plan yet?” Lucy asked. Plan, plan, plan… did he have a plan?

“I dunno,” Bently answered vaguely. “I guess it’ll depend on the situation when we get there. But I know we’ll have to find and free Max so he—”

“Max is a she,” Jeb corrected from the front seat.

“Right, so she can help us.” Max was a weird name for a girl.

“How far is it to the School?” Meggie asked.

“Well, we’re in Arizona right now, and the School is in Death Valley. So probably all day, but that’s good, because we’ll have the cover of darkness to attack from.”

They all settled in after that, each keeping to his or her own thoughts. Jeb turned on the radio to some news station. To be riding in a van, listening to American news, driving through Arizona all the while still in a book felt very surreal to Bently. He had been in fantasy books for so long that this felt abnormal. Once or twice, he caught himself wondering what his mom was going to make for dinner tonight.

Oh no, mom.

“King, do people in our world notice when we’re gone?” Bently asked, panic-stricken.

“They didn’t really when I left. In fact, when I came back, I came back right to the moment before I met the character who took me into the books.”

So there was hope yet. His detention seemed like such a frivolous thing compared to everything that had happened so far, and Bently snorted. If only Mrs. Grist could see him now, Bently McQuinn, the Raptor Slayer.

-

They drove all day like Jeb said they would, and then a little into the night. The bag of snacks was completely gone, and they had only stopped for bathroom breaks. Bently’s legs felt like rubber when they finally pulled up outside a tall fence with barbed wire around the edges.

“This is it,” said Jeb, turning off the engine. They all piled out, put their cloaks back on, and re-strapped their weapons to themselves.

“How are we getting in?” Meggie asked.

“Like this,” Bently replied, pulling his elvish knife out. He began cutting through the fence, which luckily wasn’t electrified, and cut rather easily. In moments, there was a hole large enough for them all to walk through comfortably.

“Where do you think Max is, Jeb?” Bently asked in a whisper as they started towards a large complex of buildings that must have been the School.

“I have no idea. I hope they didn’t lock her in a dog crate, that—”

Snarls filled the air. Bently quickly sheathed his knife and drew the sword, reminded instantly of the wolves in Narnia. He saw Lucy and King draw their knives as well out of the corner of his eye, and they all formed a sort of circle around Meggie, who for some reason, still didn’t have a weapon. Bently pulled out his knife again and handed it to her behind his back. “Take it, it’s about time you had a weapon,” he muttered. She whispered her thanks, and they waited in the cold desert night, anxious and scared, but brave.

They attacked out of no where. Bently wasn’t even sure what they were, because they had wolf features, but the walked like people and talked like humans, too. It felt a little wrong, swinging his sword at things that were human-like and not fairy vampires, but he had no choice. It was him or them.

The things howled loudly when Bently slashed them open. Their blood was thick and black, like the Velociraptors. “Shut up, shut up!” Bently growled as he killed another one. They were so freaking loud, they were going to get caught.

“Jeb, what are you doing here?”

Everything stopped. Bently was panting heavily as he looked at the speaker. It was a small girl of about six or seven with blonde curls and white bird wings. Bird wings.

“Angel, darling, what—”

“You brought them here to kill Max, didn’t you?” she asked, her eyes furious but the rest of her face in composure.

“No, the real Max has been captured—”

“Go. Inside. All of you.”

A dark figure landed next to Angel. This was a boy with black hair, cloths, and wings. “And drop all your weapons right here.”

Four more figures landed around them, more people with wings. Except for one, and that was a girl with blonde hair. It was Rosalie.

“Excellent job, Angel and Fang. I knew they were coming to kill me,” she said with a sneer as they all dropped their weapons. The sword fell to the ground with an ominous clang, and Bently gritted his teeth. Now how was he supposed to kill her?

They were ushered into the School, leaving the dead wolf things behind them on the ground. They walked through many rooms, most with complex computers and other scientific machines that Bently didn’t understand nor want to. Finally, they were shown into a room with dozens of dog crates in various sizes. They gave Bently the creeps.

“Is that you, Fang?” called out a hard female voice. “Let me out of here! She’s an imposter! Nudge, Iggy? Angel, you know that I am the real me!”

“Shut up, imposter,” snapped Rosalie as she passed by the crate where the noise was coming from. Inside was another girl with tawny wings, looking about Bently’s age, and had short, dirty blonde hair. “Fang, show our gusts their quarters for the night.”

They all were shoved into their own personal dog crates. Bently’s was between the real Max’s and King’s. Bently was very cramped, but when the flock and Rosalie had left, he grinned a very wicked grin. From inside his cloak he pulled out the pen and one of the notebooks Dr. Martinez had gotten for him. They still had a chance.

“You’re Max, right?” he asked the girl in the crate next to him. She looked at him with fierce brown eyes.

“Yeah, and you?”

“Bently McQuinn.”

“The writer?”

“Yeup.”

“So what’s the plan?”

‘I wish people would stop asking that,’ Bently thought in irritation. “Well, we’re going to break you out. And then somehow, we’re going to kill Rosalie. Although, I don’t know how that’ll happen, since Gryffindor’s Sword is lying in the sand outside.”

“Well, your plan is going wonderfully so far,” Max said cynically.

“Look, I have my notebook with me, I’ll think of something,” Bently retorted. But there was hardly any light to see by, and since he didn’t want a repeat of the Jurassic Park incident, Bently tucked the notebook and pen away and fell asleep, using his cloak for a blanket and the hood for a pillow.

-

They were in the crates for several days. Bently didn’t bother to count them. Time seemed irrelevant, seeing as how each book seemed to have its own time zone. On the last day they were in the crates, Rosalie came in while they were receiving their meager meals.

“I’ve finally figured out what to do with you all,” she announced, looking proud of herself and swishing her sheet of blonde curls over her shoulder.

“Oh? Have you now?” King asked bitterly.

“Shut up, old man,” Rosalie hissed. “You, McQuinn. You’re going to be first. You’re all going to fight my minions, and you, McQuinn, are fighting Fang. Tomorrow morning.”

“NO!” Max shouted. “You can’t—”

“I can do what ever I want, Miss Mutant Freak,” Rosalie smirked, and then left.

Max smashed her fist into the bottom of her crate. “She can’t do this!”

“Unfortunately, she can,” said Bently. “But now we know what we’re up against. Is being up against Fang… bad?” If he remembered right, Fang was the one in all black.

“Are you kidding me?” Max said, laughing shakily. “He’s the best fighter we’ve got besides me. You don’t stand a chance against him.”

“Great,” said Bently flatly. He pulled out the notebook and stared at the blank first page for what seemed like hours. He needed to make himself stronger, but the words wouldn’t come. He had hit writer’s block.

“King?”

“Hmm?”

“How do you beat writer’s block?”

“What are you trying to write?”

“Well, if I’m supposed to fight this Fang guy tomorrow, I need to be stronger. But I can’t think of anything to write.”

He saw King frowning through the holes in his crate. “Bently, changing your own body is dangerous, I don’t—”

“The effects should go away when we leave this book, right?”

“Theoretically. How’s that theory working out on your hand?”

Bently looked down. He was still missing that pinky and part of his hand. It didn’t bother him anymore since he had finally gotten used to it not being there, but every now and then, he ran his other hand over the scar to make sure it had really happened.

“I have to try.”

King sighed. “Alright, fine. Sleep, dream. Think about other things for a while. I’ll wake you up as early as I can, and you can write then. Your dreams can usually give you pretty good ideas.”

Bently didn’t much like this idea of putting it off until the last second, but it would have to do. “Fine. I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

“Indeed you will.”