“Elder intentionally got you all worked up.” Gary replied.
Laura kept her hold on her son until she knew he could stand on his own. “It was my idea. Patrick, you know how this isn’t the first time you’ve had episodes like this?”
He remembered. In so many of the more stressful times of his life he’d been prone to strange experiences such of these, but only much milder.
“I thought it was about fear.” she said. “It always happened when you were afraid, or angry, because they often went together.”
“And it looked like it worked.” Elder said, more gravely. “What did you see? You were using all your lung power with that scream you did. Must have been something.”
“Edgar…”
“Edgar?” asked Gary.
“He…he was. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Try!”
Patrick recoiled from Gary’s sudden aggressiveness. “He’s become different. I was in his head. There’s…it’s something about the League. I think they’ve done something to him.”
Gary didn’t blink. He turned around to face everyone else in the room. They all shared the same blank look, except for Samuel Elder. Patrick remembered the same look on his face when he first realized he could no longer control Edgar back at their fight.
“It’s over…” the doctor said.
“What do you mean?” Johnny asked. “Seriously, from now on, doc, once you know something, just tell us.”
“Their leader, or whoever the thing is that is in charge of the League, they gave him their blood.” Elder shook his head, starting to pace around. “Whatever supernatural agility, speed, intelligence, and strength Black, Patane, and I had given him, the blood will improve everything exponentially. He is too strong for anyone to beat.”
“What a load of shit!” Gary screamed. “Maybe in your own ego, doctor, you would value power over friendship, but Edgar wouldn’t do that. You just assume that he would turn on us just like that?”
Patrick knew the truth. He had felt it when he entered the bat’s mind. He didn’t want to be the one to tell Gary.
“Recall what I said earlier, about the League’s greatest strength?” Elder asked.
“You said a lot about them, and yet not nearly enough.” Gary shortened his breath.
“Will. Pure will is their biggest kicker. I assumed nothing about your friend.” Elder turned back to Patrick. “When you were in Edgar’s head, what did you feel?”
“Pleasure, quick heartbeat, as if I were flying through the air, and I didn’t want to be anywhere else.”
Elder raised a hand to him. “My point. He willingly took the blood. That’s how the League works. They made me choose to inject my daughter just as they made Gordon choose to turn his son into a lab rat.”
Johnny had fallen into his seat on his favorite bean bag chair, and after that revelation, Gary didn’t want to see anyone. He turned around and faced the bookshelf.
They were going to have to talk about it sometime. Patrick didn’t want to start it, not when he could only imagine how Gary was feeling. Since their meeting, Gary had been the one with the strongest bond with Edgar. And everyone else loved him just the same. The revelation that Edgar, their dear pal and the most dangerous creature they knew, would defect to their enemy was a blow to their morale that would never recover.
“What do we do?” came a broken voice.
The doctor looked at Gary. “What did you say?”
Gary turned around, wiping the corner of his eye with a knuckle. “I asked what we do next. It’s like you said, Sam, we’re done. It’s over. We may as well give up.”
“Patrick, you must know.”
“What, mom?” he asked.
She shook her hands, fumbling for words. “You were in Edgar’s head. That’s as good a way as any to find out what their plan is, getting in the enemy’s head?”
Patrick grimaced. He didn’t like hearing his friend referred to that way. “I…I do.”
Everyone looked at him. Even Gary looked like he was back in the conversation.
“They’re going to end the world.”
“How?” Johnny asked. Everyone’s eyes asked him the same question.
“Edgar doesn’t know all of it yet.” He told them. “But they’re going to reshape all animal life on earth. Certainly millions of humans will be dead in the process.”
No one dared make a comment. The subject matter was too heavy for any of them. So he continued: “Surely it’s going to be with their blood. We’ve seen already how thousands of people around the world, including Lindsey’s father, are on life support because of it. They must have a way to spread it, and quickly.”
“But why not make that the first step of the process?” his mother mused. “Why have they been dancing around their main goal this long?”
Patrick lowered his eyes. “Because of Edgar. They wanted him as an even better weapon than Elder made him. And now they have him.”
The cracking of wood came from behind everyone. Patrick nearly yipped in fright, and he saw the doctor, his mother, and Johnny jump.
Gary was standing at the side with bleeding knuckles. He had successfully punched a hole in the wall.
“Damnit!” he shouted.
“Gary, we’re going to need you to calm down.” Patrick said.
“Calm down? My friend has betrayed us! Not to mention the man responsible for my father’s death is now acting as a friend to us. Besides, Samuel, why the hell are you helping us anyway? Doing away with millions of people…isn’t that what you wanted to do?”
Elder scowled at him. “That was never my intention. I wanted to save the world by making believers, hell, I still do. Gary, I am truly deeply sorry for the role I had in killing James Frost. It’s like I told you days ago, your father was putting all of us at risk with his hotheadedness. And your mother was no help to him either. If they didn’t die in that car crash, we’d probably already be living under the League’s rule in some other form. I’m truly very sorry, but it was the League who really did it. The Serpent League wants to end our world as we know it...”
“And I’m starting to think I might agree with them!” he shouted back.
“The League doesn’t care about individuals.” Elder cheeks grew less red. “Hell, they don’t really care about populations or any species. They just want to fulfill the task they so truly believe they were created to do, and heaven help anyone who suffers from unnatural tyrants that rise to power because of their mutating blood.”
“But Edgar doesn’t know that.” Patrick walked over to Gary, putting a hand on his shoulder as he wiped his bloody knuckles on his pant leg. He felt for Gary. He imagined that his friend wanted to believe that his parents died for something different. Something that didn’t seem so broken now. “Regardless if what Elder says is true, we can get through to him, Gary. Besides, we have a weapon of our own, or should I say weapons?”
Gary and Johnny’s eyes grew wide. There was no question who he could have been talking about. This time it was Elder and his mother who were in the dark.
“What are you talking about?” asked Elder. “Who are your weapons?”
“Samuel Elder,” Patrick smiled. “I think there’s someone that you should meet.”
“Lindsey, come back here!” Slate shouted.
Several of the hospital staff rushed out of the rooms to quiet him and stop him as he rushed down the hall in pursuit of his girlfriend.
She was expecting BJ to grab her at any second, but she was probably not daring enough to turn into an animal in front of everyone. Then again, the world was already becoming normalized with them.
“It’s not safe!” Jane shouted.
“Sir, miss, you can’t be here.” said one of the doctors, as Slate brushed his hand away.
“That’s her father in there!” Slate replied. “Doctor, you have no idea what’s going on, and I don’t blame you, but we need to get her out of there. It’s not safe!”
Lindsey rounded the corner. S
he saw a squad of white coats holed up in the room with her father. Some of them were coming out to see what the commotion was. As they did, Lindsey eased passed them like jelly, and they weren’t quick enough to stop her.
“Miss, we can’t let you-” She cut off the doctor as she brushed passed him, shoving him against the door hinge.
“I’m sorry, but I’m not leaving him!”
Suddenly an immense gust of wind sealed the doors, blocking the only way into the room. The doctors began banging on the doors, while some shouted for security.
The wind began to take form. It left a light bluish trail, followed by a cocktail of green, red and black.
“BJ, you have to help me.” she told the wind. “There’s no way I’m leaving my dad to the will of the Serpent League.”
The wind rushed down, forming everything from ankles to shoulders, and then the rest of the purple-dressed girl.
“What were you? A fly?” Lindsey asked.
BJ smiled. “Easiest way to travel without being seen. Lindsey, I want to help you.”
“And how are you going to do that? You’ve already told us everything you know, and that can’t cure my father.”
BJ ushered Lindsey away from the door, so the screams of the doctors wouldn’t drown their conversation. They came to the bed where her father lay motionless. It was completely sealed in a plastic-like bubble, and his breathing was being assisted by a vacuum-like machine. With each exhale, the bubble expanded, and then shrunk with each intake.
“God…” Lindsey collapsed into BJ’s hands. “There’s nothing we can do, is there? We need to stop them somehow. Maybe then he’ll be okay.”
“I don’t think so.” BJ replied.
“What do you mean?” Her eyes were getting red with tears. “If they’re gone, maybe whatever’s inside of him will disappear, and everyone suffering like this around the world will be good again.”
“At this point, the League is the only thing keeping him alive.” BJ frowned and rubbed a hand along Lindsey’s shoulder. “I’ve been stuck with their blood almost my whole life. And I can’t change it. It is their life force, and they are obsessed with it. No matter where the League was, I wasn’t free from it. It was a physical and chemical change in me, and it can’t be reversed. It can only be accepted. And that’s how I think we can bring him back.”
The commotion outside the door had quieted. Every few seconds there was a pounding, but most of the doctors were gone, either to get more help or find tools to break down the door.
“How can that be done?” Lindsey brushed her hair out of her wet eyes. “You’re telling me I can’t have my father back, and I’m supposed to accept that?”
“I think he’s the one that needs to do that.”
Blinking was her only reply, and her lips shook.
“It’s why I’m here with you.” BJ said. “Lindsey, when I met with the League, their leader tried to attack me, but I was quick and thwarted him. Then he exchanged his ideas, I said some things, and that was all there was.”
She and Lindsey turned back to her father. The breathing mechanism rose and fell and rose and fell, seemingly making John Hunter’s face more pale with each labor. “And it’s how I believe they now have Edgar. At the end, I think he wants to be one of them.”
“So, what do you want me to do?” Lindsey asked.
“He’s not dying. Not yet. His body is just having trouble processing the instant changes he received. His mind is still there, and I’ll bet he’s dreaming right now.”
BJ’s raised Lindsey’s hand, guiding it into the opening in the bubble where an operating hand could slip through to help the patient. To help her father.
“Make him want to wake up again.”
His life was in a loop. John wasn’t aware of it.
And he was just a child, reliving every memory he had, even those that had slipped from his memory long ago.
At age four he was punished for staying up too late. His mom and dad, Lindsey’s grandparents, had found him awake reading one of his picture books. Mom and Pop Hunter wanted to instill in their son the virtues of punctuality early in his life, and he went the next week without anything to read.
At age seven his friends made fun of him for not wanting to play with his own toys. He enjoyed them, like any little boy, but he spent most of his play-time with his little police figures, always playing out his favorite scenes from Adam-12 and Hawaii Five-O, two shows he devoured. Even though his parents weren’t into cop shows, they were kind enough to let him stay up late enough to see them, and he always listened to his parents after that.
At twelve he had his first serious bullying incident. He was ambushed by a pack of burly eighth graders. Most of their punches were to his shoulders and back, but he was short for breath after two quick fires to the stomach and one to the jaw left him with bloody gums. They laughed as they accused him of having sex with a boy in their class. He never heard of that person, or did he remember his name, but he remembered the beating.
Days later he took his birthday gift into the woods outside his Maryland home. His father had gotten him a Marksman Repeater BB gun for his birthday. He didn’t ask for it, but his father assumed his son would want it. Seemingly all the boys had one. He never used it until then.
He shot four birds and ten frogs with it and tried getting two squirrels but they were too fast. Never before had he wanted to hurt another living thing. But his beating gave him an unquenchable urge to release the anger inside him, and he wanted to put his birthday gift to use.
An eagle was flying over at right the wrong time. It was hundreds of feet above his head, but John didn’t care. He fired one round into the air and the bird came crashing down like a rag doll. He had rushed over to the grassy plain where it had landed. Its eye was gone.
Seeing what he’d done made young John Hunter fall to his knees in tears. In his fury he cast out his gun like a javelin, closing his eyes and turning away so he couldn’t see where it landed. He dug a grave for the eagle with his hands, and when the night had come and he was back in his room he saw the police figures on the shelves of his room, and he knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to spend the rest of his life protecting, and he gave himself a name to never forget what had started it.
He called himself Eagle Eye.
At twenty-two he was one of the top students in the academy. Where he really shined above the rest were in the shooting ranges. Picking up a gun, a real one, gave himself pain, but he fought it. He hit bullseye in more rapid succession than any of his superiors had ever seen. “That’s outstanding.” His training officer told him. “You’ll have a name for yourself around here with that talent.” “I’m Eagle Eye.” He told him.
He didn’t become a detective as soon as he wanted, and he got married way too soon. It didn’t work out. But divorce was all Lindsey had known, so she never knew of a home with two parents. She saw her mother enough, but he knew she wasn’t happy. He knew that there was a sadness in all of them, and that just drove him more and more to his work.
And cops weren’t the most popular people, if there ever was a moment in history where they were liked by the public. His more than thirty years of service couldn’t stop his disillusionment with how much cops were getting away with, and he thought so much about resigning, not wanting to deal with the threats and the drama and his guilty conscience. But if there was any hope of a voice of justice in his department, why couldn’t it be him?
But he would never be able to do enough. He was nearing retirement, and still hadn’t seen a real difference made with his presence. Eagle Eye wanted to be something more, and something inside him was stopping him from moving on…
The department…
He felt something far away, like the glimpse of an asteroid falling into the sun’s orbit only to be shot out back into the vastness of the outer system.
And he remembered the League…
Many officers killed, and he was…where was he? Dead? Probably not, he was vaguely
aware of his breathing, and an up and down motion of his body.
Lindsey.
He could hear her calling to him. Feel her touch along his arm. If there was one thing that kept him alive, one thing that stopped him from retreating back into the scared, animal-killing twelve-year-old little boy, it was her.
He didn’t know if he would ever do something truly good, and at that moment he didn’t care. He wanted to come back to her. He didn’t want to relive his life anymore in the illusion vacuum of his unconscious mind. He wanted to hurt, to get old, to retire and to see where the love of his life would end up.
A heaviness fell over him, and suddenly he was shooting up, like taking a ride in an elevator in a launching spacecraft.
A tingling came over his skin, and his daughter’s touch retreated. His arms were opening, and a whole system of things was forming over all his bare skin. It was smooth and brushed softly against his sides.
He wanted to swing his arms around. He wanted to get off the ground.
John Hunter wanted to fly.
Outside his mind, a new coat of feathers had sprouted from the holes in his skin.
And from his whole transformation, as he imagined the look on Lindsey’s face as he woke up, he kept trying to leap, and he repeated on thinking over and over to himself, and after a few times, he was incapable of doing anything else, and his metamorphosis couldn’t be reversed.
I am Eagle Eye.
Lindsey leaped back and fell into BJ’s arms.
She didn’t know why she expected him to wake up peacefully. That would have been so unlike him.
His nails tore into the plastic around him. But as her father’s eyes shrunk back into their place and his new huge, looming eyes took in his surroundings he grew calm, and his nails sunk deeper into his new fingers, if they could still be called that. He still had five of them, but they were big enough to wrap around a whole human being.
“Dad…” she whispered. She felt BJ’s grip on her tighten.
John Hunter’s new form tugged at his loose hospital gown, thrashing it off and tearing holes in it with his talon feet.
“Dad!” she shouted.
The Serpent League Page 17