I Am Titanium (Pax Black Book 1)

by John Patrick Kennedy

  Pax couldn’t let the ship leave. Not like this. And that meant he couldn’t let anyone on board leave alive, either.

  They’re already dead, Pax told himself. They just don’t know it yet.

  Pax made a gesture and sent out a blast of energy, and the mass of people trying to cross the gangway were shoved backward, down the ramp and onto the cement pier. They screamed and rolled and shouted and stumbled and raged. Some of them pissed themselves. Others shook their fists.

  Pax ignored them and threw a shield around the ship. The ramp to the ship pinched in half with a screech, and the half leaning on the pier tipped into the water and sank. The ship rocked in the water, suddenly much less stable now that it was sloshing around in a big blue hamster ball.

  People, both inside and outside the bubble, panicked. They pushed and shoved. Some fought. Some even knocked the others into the water to drown.

  Pax lifted the fallen ones back onto the decks, hoping he could find a way to save them. He had to find a way to destroy the spores, even if it meant destroying the entire ship.

  Something deep inside Pax’s chest twinged, and suddenly Scarlett was there, floating in the air beside him.

  It wasn’t an astral body that Scarlett wore. Lana had destroyed Scarlett’s physical, astral-material body before returning to the astral plane. The form that floated next to Pax was built of negative energy: a girl made of swirling, obsidian-like matter.

  “Asshole,” said Scarlett. “When you’re not dying, you’re a real slut, you know that?” She scraped her straggling black hair out of her face and looked down at the cruise ship. Her eyes narrowed and then widened. “Holy shit. What the fuck are those things?”

  “Nice to see you, too.” There was no point in responding to her insults. He carefully unclenched his fists. “Terry’s creation. As soon as you kill any piece of the monster, it sheds spores and reproduces. I need you to find a way to pull the spores off that ship. Otherwise I’ll have to sink it.”

  Scarlett raised a shiny black eyebrow. “Jesus Christ, Pax. Don’t be so fucking cold.”

  “I’m not being—” Fuck it. He didn’t need to argue with her. “Just tell me whether you can do it.”

  She turned back toward the ship and raised her arms. “Yeah, I guess. We’ll see.”

  On a physical level, she didn’t do anything but wave her arms around like she was throwing big handfuls of glitter toward the ship. On a spiritual level, she was sending out tendrils of negative energy in finely spun threads. The tendrils spread out in a kind of haze, drifting toward his hamster ball, almost surrounding it. For a second, they hesitated at the glowing blue shield and then pushed their way through.

  The threads covered the ship like a fog. The fighting on board fell silent.

  Scarlett’s tendrils sought out the spores, drifting delicately in their direction and then jumping toward them almost as though they were magnetized.

  With another melodramatic gesture, this time like she was snatching bits of glitter back out of the air, Scarlett started pulling the threads of negative energy toward her.

  This has to work.

  She gathered the spores close to her chest, forming a hairy, dark bundle that she tied off with black thread and attached to her ankle.

  There were still spores inside the ship… inside people’s bodies…

  Scarlett glanced at him. “Don’t look. This is going to suck.”

  Pax licked his lips but didn’t turn away.

  She shrugged and threw out another handful of threads toward the ship. These were thicker. Stronger.

  They floated onto the ship, across the decks, down below.

  Each one settled on a living creature. Men, women, children, babies. Even a tiny Pomeranian settled in a man’s arms.

  Scarlett looked back at Pax. “You sure?”

  “Yes,” said Pax through clenched teeth. “Do it fast.”

  Scarlett yanked on the threads. About fifty of the people on deck screamed and dropped, like their puppet strings had been cut. It still was oddly silent. Blood splattered the deck, the passengers.

  “Okay,” Scarlett said, her voice shaking. “It’s done. All the spores are gone. Happy now?”

  He shook his head. It had to be done. But he couldn’t stand to look at her just then. Pax pushed the ship toward the mouth of the bay, ignoring the renewed screaming and panic.

  “What do you want me to do with the spores? If I absorb the negative energy, they’ll just get loose again. I’m not sure how to destroy them.”

  “Whatever you did to blow up the school,” he said. “Do that again.”

  She gave him a look he couldn’t read. For a second he thought she was going to release the fuzzy, rippling ball of spores she was holding. Just let it all go and leave him to cope with this mess by himself. Instead, she squeezed down on the ball of energy, fuzzing it into a chunk of black negative energy… rock.

  “I can’t burn anything, Pax,” Scarlett said. “That was Lana’s trick, not mine.”

  A sick feeling rose in the pit of his stomach. Lana burnt down the school? Lana made the fire in the park? Why would she do that? Why wouldn’t she tell me?

  Fury burned inside him, and Pax wished her could use it to start his own fire and burn the spores out.

  “Go save your ship full of humans. I’ll clear up the spores on the island,” she said.

  “Just keep gathering those things as fast as you can.”

  It was approximately forty kilometers to the next island, Martinique. If he used the hamster bubble he could get the ship there in minutes, though the passengers wouldn’t enjoy the ride.

  But they would still be alive. He flew off.

  Ron sat on the balcony of a bar on the hill, playing guitar.

  The smoke from the fires had turned the sunset into an inferno. The Caribbean reflected the fires and the sun and the hot, red sky. Luckily for him, the wind was carrying the smoke in the opposite direction. He poured a glass of rum. He was staying just sober enough that he could still play.

  Most folks on the island had rushed toward the dock when they heard the last cruise ship had gotten its engine fixed, but Ron hadn’t even bothered to get up from his chair. He’d found an old acoustic guitar in a back room downstairs. He was playing for the crowd that thronged the streets, so the rest of the souls trapped on this island could die dancing. Too bad the screaming was too loud for anyone to hear him…

  He scratched his right arm. A fleck of something black had landed there an hour ago, burning like it had a spark to it. He’d blown on it, but it wouldn’t come off. Instead, it had sunk into his skin. Hurt like hell at the time, although now he couldn’t feel it too much, save for the itching. Made his fingers tingle, though.

  One of the maids he’d picked up from the hotel came through the door on the balcony and brought him a bottle of rum, tears streaming down her face. He’d crashed the rental car coming up the highway in the middle of a traffic jam. They’d had to walk the rest of the way into town. All around them were tourists limping and swearing, and kids crying. The big man had left them to go find his wife and daughter; the women had led Ron to this bar. They barely spoke English, so he had no idea what they were telling him.

  This one put the bottle on the table beside him and kissed his head. He nodded at her, still playing, and she left.

  After a while, something dry and ticklish rose in the back of his throat. He coughed. It felt like he’d swallowed a mouthful of hair. He gagged, reached in over his tongue, and felt something back there. He’d be damned if it wasn’t hair.

  He pinched the end of it. It seemed to wriggle between his fingers. He pulled on it, and felt the tug down deep in his guts. It didn’t hurt, although it probably should have.

  He pulled on it hard enough to rip something out, pu
t it on the antique cast-iron table, and poured himself another glass of rum. A fleck of ash landed in it. He picked the fleck out and drank the rum. The long piece of something on the table was curling up at the ends and turning pink.

  Someone screamed, and he put his hand over his drink.

  A shape was crawling down the street in front of him, just over eye level: a mound of junkyard garbage so huge it seemed like it was looking over the balcony at him.

  “Hey,” he said. “Monsters gotta dance, too.”

  He took a last sip of the rum, set it down, and started playing some Frank Zappa. If someone had asked him a week ago what his last song would have been, he would have picked some Jimi Hendrix. Maybe some Cream.

  Thing was, as the monster rolled a hundred feathery tentacles over the railing, pulling the banister out of the way, the world was obviously too fucked up for anything but Frank Zappa.

  The monster’s tentacles stroked the guitar.

  He played on.

  Terkun’shuks’pai watched his creations destroy the island. He had never been as fond of the islands in this part of the world as the ones in Japan, yet melancholy seemed about to overwhelm him. Perhaps it was the nature of the destruction, which, although very quick, still managed to suggest the passage of time and the irrevocable decay of the universe.

  Terkun’shuks’pai retreated from the material world into his pacha.

  He appeared a mile away from his teahouse so he could have the pleasure of walking along the path. Leaves and pine needles crunched beneath his feet. The air smelled of pinesap and leaf mold and rain; the sky hung with thick clouds. A touch of smoke shook the leaves, as though someone had lit a fire on this damp, slightly chilly day. It began to rain in small, light drops.

  He could feel the dark cave farther down the valley, waiting for him.

  Eventually, the footpath crossed out of the forest and into a partial clearing near the teahouse. Worn, flat stones rested underfoot. The roof overhung the brickwork foundation upon which the house had been built. The bottoms of the poles holding up the roof were weathered gray, aged faster by the splashing of rain off the brick. The screens were closed. He stepped under the eaves and waited. Soon the rain began in earnest. The water poured off the roof, battered the leaves, overflowed the streams, and raced to the bottom of the valley.

  Toward the cave.

  He entered the teahouse barefoot, sat upon the rice mats, and then stood and opened the screens. A chilled breeze brought in splashes of rain along with the scents of the forest and a thin stream of smoke that was almost a memory.

  The lacquer panel in the floor had been removed and the brazier within was hot. The water was just coming to a boil.

  The small black jar had been set out for him, along with his other tools.

  Carefully, Terkun’shuks’pai made the tea.

  The steam rose in dark clouds and contained many things: the scent of sorrow, as bitter and delectable as chocolate; the smoked, wet oak leaves of regret; the oily sweetness of blossoming anger; the spicy vinegar of hate.

  He whisked it longer than was necessary, breathing in the steam.

  He poured it carefully into a cup, raised it to his lips, and sipped. Grimaced.

  Outside, the darkness within the cave rippled…

  Then, in a corner of the teahouse, near the ground, a small tear appeared.

  Pax’s hamster ball was no more than a faint, blue haze far below him, splashing a long, faint ripple along the waves. He’d dropped off the cruise ship without trouble: he hadn’t let them see him. The fires on St. Lucia seemed to have burned down; at least, fewer orange sparks showed against the horizon and less smoke.

  Maybe Scarlett had taken care of everything. Maybe he could catapult himself into outer space and relax for a while. When this was all over he was going to build himself a secret base where nobody, not even Terry, could find him. And then he was going to find a way to find Terry. And hurt him. Badly.

  The sky was clear, and the moon was rising in the east, shining down over the devastation.

  The northern end of the island still held a few houses and trees just past a white, crescent-shaped beach. Rich people’s mansions. The beach was packed with flashlights and torches, and echoed with dance music. The air reeked of alcohol, cigarette smoke, and weed.

  He rolled up onto the beach, bouncing gently along the tops of people’s heads as though he were crowd surfing at some concert. People screamed and pushed at the ball or rushed away from it. He ignored them and kept rolling. A few gunshots went off. The bullets probably hurt the shooters—or, more likely, innocent bystanders—more than they hurt his shield.

  Pax was too busy to worry about it.

  He rolled off the beach and up the side of the island, bouncing gently on top of the remaining trees, buildings, and power lines. The destruction of the island seemed to have stopped.

  Scarlett must have been able to control the rest of the spores after all.

  The town just past the beach was a ragged wasteland of half-destroyed buildings, disintegrating roads, slimy goop, and falling flakes of half-burnt paper. Beyond the town, the monsters had eaten everything. Even the dirt.

  He heard no sound of birds or even insects.

  He rose higher. Scarlett?

  I’m in a pool on top of the ridge. They’re starting to get away from me, Pax. There’s just too many of them.

  He bounced over the surface of the ugly, pockmarked ground, scanning for her. Trying to find her by following the strongest concentrations of negative energy. Just up ahead—

  A high-speed aircraft tore through the sky. Following the jet was a flash of bright light and a deep whump.

  It had come from the beach.

  A fireball rolled up the valley, orange and yellow and blood-red. As the fireball rose, it developed a crust of black smoke. A layer of smoke blew across the ocean off the beach.

  The air roared from the explosion.

  Pax dropped his shield and landed on the bare rock before the wind could push him off the island. He blinked back involuntary tears as he looked at the smoking remains where the party had been.

  The wind kicked sand and loose pebbles across his feet.

  We just got bombed, didn’t we? Scarlett sounded angrier than before and tired. Fuck, Pax. I can’t hang on to these things. I don’t even have all of them. The bigger ones… I couldn’t hold them and the spores, too. I sealed them inside a dead volcano at the other end of the island. I think they’re building something.

  Pax turned away from the destruction at the other end of the island. Scarlett was close, just over the ridge—

  He froze.

  He was looking down at a pool of negative energy, just like the one at the North Pole. Not a big one. One just about the size of Scarlett. Or maybe a little bigger.

  The fuck, Scarlett?

  I couldn’t hold all these things and stay human-looking, she said.

  You’re a fucking puddle of ooze.

  Find a way to destroy these things. Then I’ll worry about putting my makeup on and doing my hair.

  Another jet was coming from the northwest. Whoever was sending jets at them was going to bomb this island until it melted into slag.

  Get the spores ready to move, he said. We’ll use the jet to burn them out.

  Well, that’s cold, Scarlett answered. Sure you’re not becoming like me?

  Pax didn’t bother replying. He searched for the next jet. Half a minute more.

  The negative energy rippled and bulged upward, a sloppy sphere. The sides swelled and then smoothed, as the spores within the ball tried to explode outward.

  I can’t hold it for thirty seconds.

  You have to.

  I can’t.

  He threw a shield up and tightene
d it until it was touching the surface of the ball.

  The negative energy split, and spores exploded out of it, filling his shield with a dark pink cloud. The negative energy passed through his shield as if it weren’t even there, flopping back down in its puddle.

  Ugh. God, it’s good to get those out. They make me feel sick.

  The next jet was getting closer. The sound of its flight was rising in pitch quickly.

  His shield rose in the air. The moon was higher now and turned the side of the shield into a swirling, dark pink pearl.

  The jet came into sight.

  Pax floated the ball of spores in the air, crossing the jet’s path.

  The jet cut through the air above him. Its wing smashed into the side of the bubble—and stuck.

  Pax threw another shield around both the jet and the spores and then dissolved the inner shield.

  The plane simultaneously lost its ability to maneuver, contact the outside world, and avoid the heat of its jets. The shield rippled with heat and fire. Pax let it fall toward the island. It wasn’t like he had to worry about what it would hit when it fell.

  Before it hit the ground, the bombs went off.

  His shield glowed bright, throwing a faint blue cast across the barren island. It was brighter and larger than before. The brightest moonlight he could imagine.

  It was more energy than he knew what to do with.

  His shield hit the ground and burst, popping like a bubble.

  Heat and light and radiation blasted across him, throwing him tumbling over the island.

  A nuke? They sent a fucking nuke? He let the force of the explosion carry him out above the ocean, threw up a shield, and bobbed on the surface of the water. The rumbling in the air went on and on. A burning mushroom cloud rose over the island. It looked unreal.