Trenchcoat turned, the shotgun trained on the space where the sound had come from. But no blast followed. Absolutely sure now that he couldn’t see her, Carrie danced around the gunman as he moved to investigate the noise. She dashed forward and knelt in front of the king and queen-bee of Rosecranz High, wrapping her arms around them.
Stephanie startled at the touch, then the light of recognition dawned in her eyes. Flash’s mouth opened.
“Be quiet,” Carrie whispered. “Don’t say a word.”
“Where’d you come from?” Stephanie asked. “Why’re you wearing that mask?”
“That’s lots of words! Shhhhhh!” Carrie saw Flash look behind her and knew the shooter had turned back around.
“Where are they? Where’d they go?” Trenchcoat strode back to the middle of the room, his eyes darting this way and that as he looked under desks. “You’d better come out right now!”
Carrie didn’t know what to do. The gunman was yelling, threatening, gesturing wildly with the shotgun, and it was only a matter of time before his anger got someone shot. Someone like Mr. Johns.
Thunk!
They heard the metallic sound of a door slamming open against the wall down the hallway.
The police were here.
Oh no, too soon.
“Scary Carrie, what are you—?” Stephanie began.
“Shut up, thou hasty-witted harpy!”
On instinct, Carrie had drawn that arrow from her quiver of Shakespearean insults. Stephanie, eyes wide, shut up.
Boots squeaked on the polished floor outside the classroom, coming closer.
“They shouldn’t have done that,” Trenchcoat said. “And now it’s too late.”
Carrie looked over her shoulder to see the gunman turning his shotgun on the person closest to him in that moment.
Mr. Johns!
The librarian threw his arms around his head in a hopeless attempt to protect himself.
She had milliseconds. She had to act.
Carrie sprang from the floor and grabbed up the football helmet from the desk. Superman, Power Girl, Hulk, Jessica Jones, Thor, Supergirl, and the Thing—all the strongest, mightiest heroes she could conjure filled her head as with one, mighty blow she bashed Trenchcoat across the back of the skull.
“Unghh!”
Boom!
There was a shattering of Bunsen burners from the lab’s back wall as the buckshot hit. The shotgun clattered to the floor, and like a heavy sack of bones and blood, Trenchcoat collapsed beside it.
The blast from the shotgun died on the walls. Officers rushed in from the corridor, guns at the ready. Carrie stood over the shooter, Flash’s helmet still in her hand.
“Carrie?” Mr. Johns looked up from beneath his elbows, and said her name as if, by speaking out loud, he could prove to himself he was still alive. “Carrie Conrad?”
Trying to catch her breath, Carrie smiled with relief.
I did it! I saved him.
The police moved quickly, kicking the shotgun out of arm’s reach and pulling Trenchcoat’s hands behind his back. Carrie stepped out of their way as they worked to haul the comatose gunman up. One of the officers yanked off the ski mask.
Gasps erupted around the lab. The shooter’s long, blonde hair fell around her shoulders.
“It’s a girl!” a student said.
“I think I know her,” said another.
“I know her … Melinda Payne,” Kirby said. His face had gone white. He sat down on the stool behind his desk and took a long, slow breath. “She was just in here yesterday, begging me for a better grade.”
“I can’t believe it’s a girl,” a boy said.
Somehow, some way, it didn’t surprise Carrie at all that Trenchcoat was a girl. In fact, it seemed exactly as it should be. A girl villain for a girl hero, she thought simply as she watched the officers drag her away. Thinking that made her glow, inside and out.
The look on Mr. Johns’s face as he rose from the floor gave her pause. Then Carrie realized why he was staring so oddly at her and took off the mask. His lips stretched into a mirror image of her smile, proud and radiant above the familiar flare of his bowtie.
“I know it’s not exactly school policy,” he began as he opened his arms, then grunted from the impact of Carrie plastering herself against him in a bear hug. “Thank you, Carrie,” he managed quietly. “Thank you for saving my life.”
• • •
It was Monday before Rosecranz High reopened. Many a parent had to hear many a teenager complain that they’d only had to miss one day of school. The attack had happened on a Thursday.
The police had interviewed the witnesses, of course, including Carrie. Trenchcoat, a.k.a. Melinda Payne, was a senior and had taken rather personally the fact that her grade point average had proven insufficient for the college of her choice to accept her. Earning a failing grade from Coach Kirby had been the final nail in her academic coffin. You might think her reaction to that bit of news a tad extreme, but then, you don’t know Melinda’s parents or her own deeply ingrained fear of academic failure.
“A typical teen,” someone joked in the teacher’s lounge, “albeit with a shotgun.”
No one thought that was very funny.
At lunch on Monday, Carrie moved tables twice before realizing her fellow students refused to let her sit alone. They yammered at her with excited enthusiasm. Some even hugged her, which made her uncomfortable, especially when the boys did it. Still, she accepted their gratitude for stopping Melinda with a kind of quiet grace and hardly insulted any of them in her mind with the help of the Bard.
One boy asked sheepishly if she had a date to Sadie Hawkins yet, and she stammered out a no, prompting him to get down on one knee and offer himself for the honor. Carrie turned a bright red as the lunch room held its breath but finally stammered out a yes, drawing thunderous applause from her assembled peers. She’d never been so glad when the fifth period bell rang, not even on the worst day of teasing by the Fearsome Foursome.
When she walked into the library, she found Mr. Johns standing at the counter, quietly stamping returned books as always.
“How’s the hero—pardon me, heroine—of Rosecranz High?” he asked, beaming broadly.
“Popular,” Carrie said, though her tone had a bit of the-dog-that’s-caught-the-car in it. “It’s…”
Mr. Johns set his stamp down and waited patiently.
“… uncomfortable,” she said finally.
“Feeling a bit at sea?”
Carrie nodded, finding her favorite table. “I just want to sit here for an hour and be normal again.” She set her backpack down and began unloading it. There was the Riverside Shakespeare, of course (those insults had come in handy), the brand-new issue of Brides magazine, and the comics she’d never gotten around to reading last week—Wonder Woman, Power Girl, Jessica Jones, Supergirl, and one of the comic collections Mr. Johns had ordered for her, the Ultimate Fantastic Four featuring Sue Storm Richards on the cover.
“That’s quite a haul,” Johns observed as he walked over.
Carrie took in the array of adventures on the tabletop. “It is. Oh, hey,” she said, looking up, “I never thanked you for ordering all the collections. They’ll keep me busy till I graduate!”
“Only a year?” he teased, then winked. “So, what are we reading today? Wonder Woman? Romeo and Juliet?”
“Not Romeo and Juliet!” she said quickly. Sadie Hawkins was looking scary enough. The only thing worse would be not having a date, she’d decided right after she’d gotten one.
“I was wondering, have you ever thought of writing something, Carrie?” Johns asked. “A comic book of your own, maybe? You know, the best writers are voracious readers. It’s how they learn their craft. All it takes to be a good writer is that and practice and a great imagination.”
Imagination, Carrie thought. It’s the most powerful superpower anyone could ever have. That much she knew. Imagination, she was convinced now, was what had helped her become
invisible and save Mr. Johns. And had it helped her conjure the strength to knock out Melinda with one blow, too? Carrie wondered in that moment what else her imagination could help her do.
“Seriously,” Johns said, “you should think about writing a superhero comic. You’ve already got the hero part down!” His eyes sparkled with the idea.
“Maybe so,” Carrie said, her mind’s eye seeing visions of her future life and its infinite possibilities. “Maybe I’ll write a book someday. Maybe I’ll even write a comic book about superheroes.” Her gaze found the Ultimate Fantastic Four again, and she smiled at Invisible Girl on the cover.
Or maybe I’ll become one.
A Word from Chris Pourteau
I hope you enjoyed reading “Geek Gurl Rising” as much as I enjoyed writing it. I’ve been a comic book geek for as long as I could read (1977 and 1978 seem to have been my big years, if my boxful of comics is any indication). I seeded some Easter eggs for readers in my story as a nod to what those comics meant to me growing up. (For example, Carrie Conrad’s name is a nod to Stan Lee’s alliterative naming convention—Reed Richards, Peter Parker, Bruce Banner.)
As with Carrie, comics opened my imagination to the possibilities of what can be while firmly grounding me (via their multi-paneled morality plays) in what heroes should be. Without those comic books growing up—my favorites were Batman and Spider-Man—I doubt I’d be a writer today; or, even, a lover of reading.
If you’d like to let me know what you think of “Geek Gurl Rising” or if you just want to say howdy, feel free to email me at [email protected]. If you’d like to find out more about me or read more of my stuff, sign up for my monthly newsletter. I promise not to spam, and I’ll send you free stuff.
To give you a sense of my eclectic writing habits, my first novel, Shadows Burned In (a family saga, near-future, psychological thriller), won the 2015 eLite Book Award Gold Medal for Literary Fiction. In 2015, I edited and produced the collection Tails of the Apocalypse, which contains short stories set in different apocalyptic scenarios and feature animals as main characters. My own contribution, “Unconditional”—which was well-received when it was published on its own earlier that year and more or less generated the idea for Tails as a result—is part of the collection. You can check out my catalog of fiction on Amazon.
ANNA
BY PATRICIA GILLIAM
ANNA
BY PATRICIA GILLIAM
Three minutes and forty-nine seconds—not enough time to evacuate the entire hospital or move the device. Maybe enough time to disarm it. Removing the front cover panel isn’t difficult, but my hands are shaking. I can’t concentrate like this. It’s all the noise. Kids crying. Patients asking questions their doctors can’t answer. Floor upon floor of phone conversations, medical monitors, movie gun battles, breathing machines, news feeds—
I have to focus. I recognize the bomb’s configuration, but its components are more advanced than anything I’ve ever encountered. I can’t risk everyone’s lives on the small chance I’ll figure it out in time.
I leave an electrical room, passing two fire alarms in over-crowded waiting areas to find a third in a vacant hallway. Pulling it leaves a tacky layer of tamper dye on my fingertips, but I hide my hand in my jacket pocket and return without being stopped. People seem more irritated than concerned by the lights and blaring noise, but at least some of them begin to exit. I hope they make it—need to convince myself that I made the right call.
One minute and twenty-seven seconds left when I make it back. Timers haven’t changed too much, and I gain manual access on my first attempt—resetting it to its maximum of 99 hours and 59 minutes. It maintains this for two seconds before returning to its original countdown. I search for a wireless transmitter nearby, but it could be anywhere. I need to disconnect the device’s receiver, but the closest access panel is sealed shut and adhered to the wall. Safely going through the front would take me several minutes—time I’ve already spent.
Thirty seconds. I should run—maybe drag one final group out with me—but I’m too frustrated. I start pushing aside entire sections I shouldn’t—areas that could detonate the bomb through pressure sensors—until I can see the receiver. I pry it free, and it clatters to the bottom of the casing. Another reset of the timer. One second. Two seconds. The countdown holds this time.
Ninety-nine hours and fifty-nine minutes—more than enough time for everyone to leave and the actual experts to arrive. I exhale and rest against the opposite wall, laughing in relief despite the blue dye coating both my hands and the timer’s controls. I could be discovered at any moment—probably blamed for everything—but I could live with that. Someone needs to know the truth about what happened to me.
I see the timer change again, but I’m not sure of the cause this time. Ten. Nine. No. No. No. No. Not now. I stand and scramble to get it back into manual mode. The reset seems to work again, but I don’t want to trust it.
All right, new plan—I’ll just continue resetting the timer and buy everyone a little less than two seconds at a time. Hopefully whoever finds me will believe me.
Seconds later, I hear hinges squeak and realize I forgot to lock the door on my way back. A white-haired man in lab coat smiles at me in recognition, but I don’t know him. His glasses make his eyes look unnaturally large, almost comical, and they widen more at the sight of the bomb.
“Just keep guarding it! I’ll get Fynn.” He disappears before I can ask him anything.
Three more resets. The sequence is almost muscle memory now, and I’ve increased the frequency to once a second as a precaution.
A man in a dark suit appears in the doorway, but the old man isn’t with him.
“Are you Fynn?” I ask, but he pulls out a gun and aims it at me without saying a word. “Listen to me! I’m preventing this thing from going off. You’ll kill everyone—including yourself!”
His gaze remains on me, but he changes his aim to the device before I have time to react.
Everything goes bright and silent.
• • •
“Hey, try not to move.” A younger man’s voice says, and I hear the click of a radio. “This is Roebuck. We have a survivor near the parking garage—female, early-to-mid twenties.”
My left eye refuses to open, and I have to blink several times for my right to focus. Roebuck crouches beside me and squeezes my hand. I squeeze it back.
“I’m about two minutes from you,” a woman responds from the radio. “Med team is about five minutes out.”
“Copy.” He’s trying to hide the panic in his voice but not doing a good job of it. “Lot of overhanging debris over here…may need to move her before they can treat her.”
“What happened?” I ask. Pain shoots through my abdomen and chest when I ignore his advice and try to sit up. I slump back, small rocks jabbing me through my jacket. “Where are we?”
“Someone bombed the hospital about four hours ago. My name is Corbin Roebuck. I’m with the IBI. What’s your name?”
I want to answer, but nothing comes. “I’m sorry. I can’t remember right now.”
“It’s all right. We’ll get it figured out.” He forces a smile when a dark-haired woman arrives and crouches beside him. “This is my partner, Bethany Fynn. Beth, she’s conscious but doesn’t remember her name.”
I’ve heard Fynn’s name before, but we’ve never met. The pain has put my mind into a fog, and part of me just wants to close my eyes and never move again.
“Do you mind if I look at your eyes?” Fynn asks me, already clicking on a small light.
I resist the urge to shake my head. My neck hurts, too. “Sure, go ahead.”
She shines the light toward my face and then frowns. “Can you see anything out of your left? There’s swelling around it, and I don’t want to make things worse.”
“It won’t open,” I explain, and she moves on to my right eye. I can see the beam, but something makes Roebuck release my hand and back away. He seems confused, alm
ost frightened.
“Guess that explains how she survived…” Agent Fynn doesn’t seem fazed and starts speaking another language to me. I don’t understand it.
“Sorry, I just know English,” I reply, still concerned by Agent Roebuck’s reaction. “What’s wrong with me?”
By that point, a full medical team has arrived. Fynn asks for them to scan me.
“She needs emergency surgery.” The medic sounds nervous. “I’ve never seen this much shrapnel in a living body. If she’d been human, she wouldn’t have survived.”
If I had been human? None of this makes any sense, and it doesn’t help that Agent Roebuck keeps staring as if I’m some sort of monster.
A sharp ringing strikes my ears, and I scream out in pain. The medic with the scanner puts something to my neck, and I feel a sting followed by a coldness coursing through my veins.
I black out.
• • •
The smell of coffee brewing wakes me. Without thinking, I open my eyes and sit up. I can see out of both eyes again, and all the earlier pain has vanished. Part of me had expected to wake up in some government lab—if even I woke up at all—but this looks more like someone’s living room. The couch is leather, and I’m covered by a hideous neon pink bedspread.
Someone changed my clothes to a matching navy sweatshirt and pants, and I don’t see any of my original clothes nearby. I check my stomach, and there are no signs of surgical incisions or scarring. I push up my sleeves, and there isn’t even a scratch on my arms or hands. A rapid pulse of blue light trails underneath my skin from my forearm to my wrist, startling me.
“What the hell?” I mumble to myself, but Agent Fynn hears me and walks in from the next room. “Sorry—hi.”
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