Lessons on Destroying the World

by Gant, Gene

  And he did not care.

  That was the point where I got hit with T-Bo’s rage. I shifted direction, sending my molecules flying toward Detroit. T-Bo opened fire, squeezing off six shots in rapid succession, tracking Delroy as he ran across the porch. The first shot struck the older woman in her neck, knocking her back against the wall of the house. The next two shots hit the baby, one in the shoulder and one in the head, just as his mother tried to turn him away and shield him with her own body. The fourth bullet hit the mother above her left hip, and she collapsed in an awkward heap, clutching the bottle in her right hand and squeezing the baby to her side with her left arm. The fifth and sixth shots shattered the window overlooking the porch, raining sparkling shards of glass over the fallen bodies.

  Delroy jumped from the porch and ran along the side of the house toward the alley, completely unscathed.

  My body formed seconds later from a bolt of energy that lanced onto the bloody porch. This produced an abrupt displacement of air that marked my arrival with a crack of thunder. T-Bo, moving to pursue Delroy, jumped back instead when he saw me and dropped his gun. His brain refused to process what his eyes had just seen—a short, slight, weird-looking white guy with an attitude appearing out of nowhere like Samantha on Bewitched, complete with sound effect. He convinced himself that I had simply dashed out of the house.

  I glared at him with the outrage his complete disregard for innocents had fired in me. This did not impress him much; he reached for his gun. I didn’t care whether he intended to go at once after Delroy or to shoot me first and then go after Delroy. The guy would never fire a gun again.

  The older woman was Stella Grant, a twice-divorced supervisor in a cereal manufacturing plant. She felt no pain from her injuries. The bullet had ripped her spinal cord and left carotid artery in its passage through her neck. She was unconscious and only seconds from death. Her three-week-old grandson, Akima Grant, also felt no pain. The bullet that punched into his brain had killed him outright. Not even Mertice Grant, a high school dropout who had recently been furloughed from her job at an auto plant that manufactured parts for GM cars, was in pain despite the bullet lodged above her hip. She had fainted, her mind overwhelmed by the attack.

  When T-Bo’s fingers grazed the butt of his gun, he screamed and fell to the ground. Pain raged in his head, neck, shoulder, and just above his left hip, burning with such intensity that he flopped around in a frenzy of desperate motion. He looked at me, terrified, and opened his mouth to beg for help. He gargled out another scream instead as his pain intensified.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” I shouted at him. My temper was rising along with his agony. How could someone have such total disregard for the lives of other people? Did such a person deserve life himself? A bolt of blue lightning slashed the tree in the Grants’ front yard, shivered along the trunk, and ripped out huge splinters of wood in an explosion of superheated moisture. “You killed a woman and a helpless baby—a baby, damn it! And you didn’t even touch the punk you were shooting at. Yeah, you’re a real man, all right.”

  At the sound of the gunshots, several of the neighbors had called the police. Three squad cars were converging on the area, one from only four blocks away. Its siren was already audible and growing louder, a high, thin ululation. Behind me, Mertice Grant moaned, barely conscious. I turned to her. She was still clutching her baby.

  “Wake up,” I said to the little one. He opened his eyes, drawing a deep breath as he did so. He yawned hugely for something so tiny. His wounds had molded themselves together, leaving no scar. The wounds of his mother and grandmother healed in similar fashion, although they both remained unconscious. The bullets that had struck them were now three pair of 24-karat gold earrings, tucked away in Stella’s jewelry box.

  I turned back to T-Bo. He continued to wriggle like a snake with the heel of a boot pressed to its head. Part of me thought he deserved far worse punishment, but I suddenly cringed at the thought that I was hurting another person. I let his pain ease, and he went limp. Lying on his back, arms and legs outstretched, he broke into quiet sobs. The blare of the siren was growing closer. As much as he deserved a long stretch in jail, something in me balked at the idea of leaving him to the tender mercies of the police. I know, I know, the majority of cops follow the rules and don’t abuse their authority. There were bound to be a few, however, who’d slap T-Bo around when they took him into custody, and I hated the idea of them getting away with that.

  “Go, you idiot,” I said.

  T-Bo got up and reached for his gun again. Once more, his fingers grazed the weapon. Pain exploded in him again, dropping him to his knees. I’d rewired his brain so he would feel horrible aches every time he touched a weapon.

  I walked off the porch and picked up the gun, which was heavier than it looked. Then I leaned over, put my mouth next to T-Bo’s ear, and said, “Fool, run.”

  He pulled himself to his feet and stumbled away, doubled over, his arms wrapped around the burning in his gut. In the palm of my hand, the gun rearranged itself into a brick that I was sorely tempted to lob at T-Bo as he ran off. I changed the brick into gold and made it materialize in Stella’s house next to her jewelry box.

  A police car rounded the corner from Mack in a squeal of tires, lights flashing and siren screaming. I mounted the steps to the porch again, stepped over Mertice, and moved into the shaded doorway where my body faded away, bit by bit, Cheshire Cat style. My baleful eyes were the last to go, looking on with hatred as the police pulled up in front of the house.

  19

  THE DETROIT police officers were safe. I was simply too tired to do anything more. I returned to Memphis in a flash, taking shape in a little alcove at the receiving dock of the Walgreens drugstore across Belz Street from the Southgate Shopping Center. It was hardly wise to return to my neighborhood just now, but my fatigue-riddled mind wasn’t operating at peak capacity. I tucked the shades back on my face and tugged the cap down low on my head.

  It was a typical Memphis summer afternoon: cloudless sky, sunlight bouncing off the sidewalks in a ferocious glare, the air hot and humid. Buying that meal at the hospital cafeteria had emptied my wallet. But there was a one-dollar bill and three quarters in the pocket of my pants, overlooked from the last time I’d worn them. I figured I’d buy myself something cold to drink and then take Antonio up on his offer of using his bedroom for a quick nap.

  I walked around the building to the drugstore’s front entrance. Inside, I pulled a frosty can of soda from the cooler next to the door and got in line to pay for it. There was a new clerk working the cash register, a lean girl maybe three years older than me, wearing a tan smock over pink slacks. The dark-brown hair cascading down her back looked very much like something that had once swished about the hindquarters of a horse.

  When she had finished checking out the person ahead of me, I stepped up and placed my soda on the counter. Upon making eye contact with me, she did a double take. Despite the shades and cap, recognition and excitement sparked in her face, as if she had spotted a celebrity.

  For a moment, it seemed that she was going to shout something ridiculous like, “It’s you!” Thankfully, her only words were, “May I help you?”

  I pushed the can of soda toward her. She rang it up, took the dollar, and handed me my change. On an impulse, she opened her mouth to ask something of me. Before she could speak, I grabbed the can and hurried out of the store.

  Outside, I opened the can and downed the soda. The long belch that followed hurt my throat, but I could already feel the sugar hyping up my system. I figured I’d have just enough energy to get myself into the alley behind the shopping center that was secluded enough to cover my teleportation back to Antonio’s.

  As I started away from Walgreens, I heard a vehicle pull up behind me. The door flew open, and a voice bellowed, “Hey!”

  I glanced back and thought, That looks just like Bebe’s Cadillac. I was surprised to see Bebe himself bulge out of the driver’s seat.
Dressed in tan slacks and a white, short-sleeved dress shirt that had wet circles under the arms, his eyes held some odd light I couldn’t identify at first. There was none of his sour temper there. Then it hit me. He was scared and frantic.

  Bebe stepped toward me, reaching out with hands that suddenly trembled. “Micah. Is it true?” he said.

  “Excuse me?” I was not much of an actor or a liar, except when threatened with violence. Dick, being accomplished at both, could spot an act or a lie instantly, and he hadn’t been sparing of the belt when he caught me indulging in either. Still, I think I gave a pretty credible display of confusion in front of the drugstore. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bebe.”

  There were dozens of people around us, and all of them were now looking at Bebe and me. I tried to walk away. The man grabbed me by the shoulders, distracting me just as I began to muster the focus required to erase all thoughts of myself from his brain. He turned me around and looked carefully into my face.

  Excitement filled his eyes suddenly. “It is true! You’re the boy they’ve been talking about on the news!” He was shouting right in my face. His breath smelled of cinnamon and cigarettes, an appetizing combination. “You’re the healer!”

  A ripple of excitement moved through the collection of onlookers, and they began to edge closer. Bebe’s fingers were digging sharply into my arms. “You got to help me. Please!” he begged. “I got lung cancer. It’s spread to my lymph nodes, and the doctors say there ain’t nothing they can do.” As he spoke, energy from the orb flowed invisibly from my body into his. It was a subtle and, at least on my part, involuntary transaction, one which barely registered on my perception. The transfer was not lost on Bebe, however. His already widened eyes threatened to pop out of his skull. “Oh my God! I can feel it!”

  “Whatever.” I rolled my eyes, attempting to play the scene off as some eccentric old coot making an ass of himself. Once again, I tried to get the hell out of there, twisting my shoulders to break the man’s grip.

  Bebe responded by crushing me to his chest, my face slamming flat against his broad, sweaty right pectoral. “I’m healed!” he proclaimed to the heavens. “Thank you, Jesus! Thank you! Thank you, Lord! Thank you, thank you!”

  Despite his age, Bebe was strong. His heightened emotions added to his strength, and I found myself suffocating, unable to break away from him. I reached into his brain and took control of his motor functions. His arms flung themselves wide, and I shoved him off, letting go of his mind as I did so. The man spun into a jig, shouting again and again that he was cured. Some people in the crowd broke into harsh, cruel laughter. Others stood silently, their eyes shifting from Bebe to me.

  A small girl stepped forward. She was nine and very pretty, a brown-skinned little thing with big bright eyes and a ponytail decked out with barrettes. Her doll-like beauty made the disfigurement of her left arm all the more startling. Automatically, I accessed her memories. She held out what remained of her left arm, which had been crushed in an automobile accident two years ago and amputated just below the elbow. Hesitantly, she touched my hand.

  Again, energy flowed from me. The girl screamed, startled by the burst, and stumbled back. She lost perhaps a half inch in height, and the energy she had taken from me reshaped that mass, causing a perfectly formed hand and forearm to sprout from her ruined limb in a matter of seconds.

  Pandemonium followed. The crowd surged forward, and there were hands everywhere, straining and grasping. The air filled with shouts and curses. People were shoved aside as those behind crushed forward in a frenzy. I was mauled, my shirt ripped apart by clutching fingers, power flowing out of my body in multiple, dizzying surges.

  The results of these transfers were immediate and dramatic. Wounds healed. A sightless eye was restored to vision. A broken wrist was mended and then broken again when its owner was knocked to the ground. A fat woman in her sixties shed pounds and years as she shrank into the petite, shapely body of a twenty-year-old.

  My head spinning, I staggered, on the verge of fainting from the confusion and the uncontrolled transfer of energy. The impulse to flee was strong, but my mind was a quagmire, and it took several moments to focus my thoughts enough to tap into the orb. In that time, preoccupied with arranging my departure, I didn’t react when the gun was put to my left temple.

  The blast that followed sent a bullet through my head. It exited behind my right ear, ricocheted off the pavement, and lodged itself in a wooden utility pole thirty feet away. Amid screams, the struggling crowd scattered, leaving only the very tall, very lean man who held the gun.

  “You are not God!” he bellowed, and then he waited for me to fall.

  Only I didn’t fall. Under the influence of the orb’s energy, my flesh and bone repaired themselves instantly in the bullet’s wake. There was no pain, just a ringing in my left ear from the crack of the gun, and even that faded away in something under two seconds. Annoyed, I looked up at the shooter.

  He had a weathered, imposing face and gray eyes flashing with a frightening array of emotions. His hair was combed back and slicked down with some substance that kept the grayish-brown strands from being disturbed by the fragile, hot breeze. He wore a tan suit, a pale-yellow dress shirt, and a brown, checkered tie that was twisted to one side. That I had not died from the shot only pissed him off more, an indication that he was somewhere on the backside of sanity himself. He raised the gun again.

  Delirious and enraged, I closed my eyes and pulled the man’s life force into me. It flowed between us in an iridescent, lightning-swift stream that rocked me back on my heels. The elderly man collapsed, his gangly body crumpling with a quiet grunt atop the black overnight bag he had been carrying. The gun went clattering across the sidewalk and spun onto the hot asphalt of the parking lot.

  The stolen energy cleared my head. The people who ducked and ran at the sound of gunfire had not gone far, stopping several yards away to watch further developments. They saw the Reverend Vaughn Titus drop to the ground and assumed he had passed out. The shooter’s name had popped into my mind without warning. I then realized that I had accessed his memories stored within the orb. The gun lay on the ground, ignored. I sent a command to the orb, and the gun evaporated in an instant.

  The onlookers were unaware that I had sucked the life out of Titus. If they had known, prudence would very likely have led them to leave me alone. Now that they perceived no danger, they started rushing in again, eager to help themselves to the restorative power I commanded. They didn’t know what to make of me, but that didn’t matter to them in the slightest. They simply saw opportunity.

  The thought of them touching me again was terrifying. I summoned a wind from the jet stream. It came howling down at more than a hundred miles an hour and scoured the parking lot around me. The people running toward me were blown off their feet, their bodies scraped painfully across asphalt and concrete. Many braced themselves against cars, their eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the whirlwind to pass. It did so only seconds later, carrying me aloft. It took me, along with the body of Reverend Titus, up to where the sky was cold.

  20

  ANTONIO WAS putting away dishes. His family had finished dinner fifteen minutes ago. Mrs. Reyes’s alma mater, the University of Tennessee, had a baseball game against the University of Memphis that night. She and Mr. Reyes had decided to take in the game. They offered to treat Antonio, but he told them he already had plans for the evening.

  Mr. Reyes had been genuinely shocked. “You’re turning down a free ball game? You must be sick.”

  Antonio had mustered a grin for his father, gotten his mother’s permission to use her car while they were gone, and ushered them into his dad’s Camaro, sending them off with a wave. He had hurried through washing the dishes and, eager to make his own departure, was practically throwing them onto the cabinet shelves.

  To his credit, he was not startled in the least when I began pressing my thoughts into his head. Hey, Tony.

  He perceived
the thought as speech and responded in kind. “What’s up, Micah? I didn’t think I’d hear from you again this soon.” A wave of guilt rolled across his face. “Did you help a lot of people?”

  No. Something came up.

  “Where are you?”

  Around.

  “No kidding.” He glanced around the kitchen, looking for some sign of me. “Can’t we talk face-to-face?”

  I don’t think that would be a good idea right now.

  “Why not?”

  I’m not feeling all that friendly toward the faithful anymore. That sort of includes you.

  Catching the menace inherent in those words, Antonio froze. He studied the dust motes drifting in the orange sunlight that lazily pierced the kitchen window, as if fearing I might suddenly spring full-blown out of the air at him.

  “Micah? What’re you talking about?”

  There was no immediate response from me, which hiked up his fear another notch. He closed the cabinet doors and went into the den, a more open space that would allow him maneuvering room if he should find headlong flight a necessity.

  “Mike, can you hear me?”

  Yeah.

  “I’m kinda worried now.”

  You should be.

  “I don’t understand. It sounds as if you’re angry at me. What did I do?”

  Again I hesitated in answering, the pissed-off part of me enjoying Antonio’s swelling unease. The rest of me was alarmed, wondering what kind of monster I was turning into.

  “Come on, Micah. We’re friends, right? Please, let me see you. Let’s talk this out in person.”

  Mind if I bring some company?

  The question puzzled him, and he hesitated, but only for a moment. “No, not at all.”

  The gangling body of Reverend Titus coalesced out of the air, a fast-forming, tan-suited plank hovering six feet above the floor of the den. It dropped heavily onto the sofa, upsetting the brass lamp perched on the end table and sending the lamp crashing to the floor. Antonio leaped backward in his alarm, just barely missing me as I materialized like a shadow in the north corner of the room. At the sight of me, he threw up his arms defensively and fell back another step.