Having bagged me, the facility guards took me back to Vegas. Daunted to put me in the facility where they still held Mother hostage, the scientists placed me in the set-up building already fixed for me in advance where they were administering me drugs to keep me oblivious, groggy, and unable to use my magic until Frank found me and got me of that hellish place.
Even though I had all my memories come back to me and recollected everything that befell me during my lifetime, I still had some questions. First off, how come I hadn’t inherited extremely wicked, even nefarious temperament and passion for killing the innocent and causing mayhem from Mother while Frank had? Although I had never gotten to know who my father was, I guessed he was a good, amiable man and I just inherited his personality. Or I either owed my kindly character to the scientists taking good care of me during the last ten years of my boyhood or I came to love this world and this particular country on my own due to my fighting enemies side by side with other soldiers who became my compatriots.
The second question I still didn’t find the answer to was how come the facility guards had actually been able to bag me when I already had my magical power full-fledged? I had a clear picture of the way in which the fight with the facility guards was unfolding; so having closed my eyes, I replayed it in my mind. When I had fought them, my magical power was quickly fading away for some weird reason. My understanding was that it was them who reduced my magical power, yet I still wasn’t sure as to how they managed to pull it off. For all I knew, they applied some kind of powerful device that either temporary drained all the magical power from me or negated it for some time. In retrospect, I should have been more watchful. Either way, I concluded that now I should be extremely careful and vigilant when I encountered the facility guards next time.
I split the building. Once in the street, I looked around to get my bearings and check to see if crazies were nearby. The street was all quiet, though. The slowly rising sun was filling the street with the golden light. An abundance of sunshine forced me to squint. The early morning, it was only thirty or so minutes since I had awoken and still the temperature was already in mid-nineties. The morning heat seemed to grow by a second. My shirt began getting wet from sweat under my jacket; rivulets of perspiration already ran down my lower back.
As Frank had promised, I knew the exact place Mother was held hostage in once my memories returned to me. The facility dubbed the Object 17 was situated just off Vegas, on the outskirts of the city. I had to find or, put differently, to jack a vehicle if I wanted to get there in time to meet Frank. As I swiftly traversed the residential area, I listened for any sounds that might give away crazies nearby. Judging from the silence, no crazies were close by as if they were deliberately keeping away from me now that I had my magical power returned to me.
As soon as I reached the road, I heard a distant rumble. I turned toward the sound and waited it out. In a few minutes, a big, black vehicle with a heavy machine gun mounted on its roof emerged from a side street. It took the left turn at an intersection and headed down the road toward me. I stepped over the curb, walked over into the middle of the road, and just stood there. Only after drawing my M9 did I realize that I didn’t need any weapons anymore. I didn’t need any kind of protection either. Having dropped the Beretta M9, I reached down to unbuckle my web gear. When it slid down to the ground, I stepped over it and once again switched my full attention to the quickly approaching car.
The big vehicle rolled to a stop within fifteen or so yards of me. With my memories having returned to me, I already knew that the uniformed soldiers inside the black vehicle were the facility guards. The man behind the .50-caliber machine gun drew a bead on me. Yet, he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to shoot me down. Perhaps, he was dumbfounded by the sight of his target lingering in front of the vehicle, who should have tried to get out of the line of fire. Finally, he got a grip on himself, snapped out of it, and opened up with the machine gun, filling the air with the rattle of gunfire. Either I was no longer needed to be taken alive and was ordered to be iced on sight or the facility guards considered me to be tough and extremely robust and were aware that I couldn’t be all that easily killed.
I didn’t wince at the gunner shooting at me. Without flinching I extended my left arm toward the vehicle. The heavy-caliber rounds were perceivably slowing down as they were getting closer to me. The closer they get, the more they lost velocity. When a bullet got within about two meters of me, it completely stopped moving. The gunner ceased shooting and gaped dumbly at a bunch of the rounds hovering motionlessly in the air in front of me, their sleek surfaces sparkling reflecting the sunlight. Once I lowered my left arm, all the bullets fell, bouncing off the paved road and skittering away.
Quickly recovering from the bewilderment, the man set about reloading the machine gun. I wasn’t about to let him release another stream of lead. My left arm flew upward. With a screech of metal being ripped off, the machine gun tore free from the car’s roof and flew a few yards up in the air. I balled my left hand into a fist and the heavy weapon crumpled into a rugged lump of rumpled metal. The big machine gun crushed so easily that it gave the impression of having been made out of a sheet of wrapping paper. When I spread my fingers so that they were far apart, the machine gun, still poised in the air far above the gunner, exploded coming apart into thousands of jagged pieces and rumpled fragments. The gunman threw his arms over his head, covering himself against the ripped scraps of metal coming down in buckets on him and lashing the vehicle like a heavy downpour.
The gunner hid himself inside the vehicle. A few seconds later, all the doors swung wide open and four more black-clad men jumped out of the car. All of them brought their assault rifles to bear on me. I didn’t flinch. I knew all my magical tricks like the back of my hand now. My retrieving the full magical power had kicked them out of my league; I had no worries on that score. I was the force to be reckoned with now.
Before long they set about shooting. I stuck out my left hand once more. Bullets didn’t slow down this time, for I wanted to show my foes another trick I knew. Once slugs reached within about one meter of me, they stopped dead, got flattened as if they smashed against an invisible bulletproof wall, and dropped to the ground. My magical invisible shield that surrounded me was under the violent onslaught, yet it didn’t yield a shade. The facility guards kept firing at me until they finally realized they couldn’t do a fucking thing to hurt me.
They ceased shooting gawking at me puzzledly and somewhat admirably. Time to show off yet another magical ability to them. While still holding my left arm stretched in front of me, I suddenly stretched my right hand out toward them and in a split second, a spherical flaming mass the size of a baseball leaped from the palm of my right hand like a bullet from a muzzle. The fireball whizzed forward toward the gaping facility guards at the speed similar to that of a bullet, trailing smoke behind itself.
The fireball smashed against the paved road just before one of the facility guards and exploded tearing off chunks of blacktop the size of small pebbles, which flew everywhere. The guard leaped backward, startled but uninjured. Not that my aim was off. While they were my foes, I just wasn’t willing to waste those people. They considered me to be some wicked, bloodthirsty monster, but it wasn’t the case. I was no monster to be frightened of.
I popped off several more fireballs at a rate of a few ones a second. I didn’t have the heart for whacking the facility guards, so I was either aiming for the gaps between them or sections of the paved road in front of them.
Finally, they got the idea. They couldn’t possibly hurt me but could easily be croaked by my fireballs. Having realized that fighting me was well above their paygrade now, the facility guards started running for their lives, which suited me just fine. Some of them wanted to get back to their vehicle and take off in it, but I rapid-fired another bunch of fireballs exploding between them and the vehicle for all their troubles. Once the facility guards realized I wasn’t going to allow them to us
e their vehicle, they whirled around and ran away.
I waited a tad while in case they might be stupid enough to get back. As it developed, they weren’t all that keen on returning to their vehicle. Well, it was time to get to the Object 17 and meet Frank. I walked over to the vehicle. Shell casings abundantly littered the area of the road where the guards had stood blasting away at me. I got into the driver’s seat behind the wheel and put the car in gear. My foot stomped down on the gas pedal. The car shot forward toward the north and tore away, racing down the street.
Something had been preying on my mind for a while now and after my recent fighting with the facility guards, it only got worse. My fighting the facility guards in the ‘Stan had resulted in my being defeated. My take on this situation had been that they had been able to bring me down on account of some device that had diminished my magical power. Yet supposing the facility scientists had invented such a gizmo, why hadn’t the guards I had just shooed away employed it to weaken me? Sure might not have had it on them, but supposing this had been the case, why they hadn’t carried the gizmo while on the chase after me? So I concluded that such a gizmo had never been invented, meaning the facility guards had been able to negate my magical power in the ‘Stan through something else.
Before I could wrap my head around it and solve this puzzle, something happened. A tremendous thunder reverberated through the street. The road shook as if pounded by an earthquake. Buildings on either side of the street trembled, the tremor grinding the houses up with great force, masonry and concrete crumbling and pulverizing. It was Mother, all right. I guessed she sensed where I was driving to and what I was going to do and she didn’t like it all that much. I wondered how far she was willing to go to stop me and foil my plan.
The rumble of the temblor died down for a few moments before starting once more. This time the earthquake lashed out much more violently. I guessed Mother just had warmed up. Or maybe having grasped that I didn’t change my mind a bit, she resolved to try harder and made up her mind that she should carry out a more persuading action. The whole street was trembling ferociously now and being swallowed by the savage earthquake. Buildings exploded one after another, big chunks of walls and roofs crashing down and smashing against the road. I was struggling with the steering wheel, spinning it left and right trying not only to dodge the big concrete hunks dropping from above but also not to get into long and deep cracks that ripped the road in front of my vehicle. Looked like Mother wasn’t just trying to prevent me from being succeeded now but also trying to actually take me out, my being her son notwithstanding. Despite this extremely perilous situation, I was able to keep a lid on it, not lapsing into a state of panic.
A big chunk was torn from the blacktop a little way farther down the lane. It soared up into the air and just hovered there three or so yards above the ground. It occurred to me that this chunk of asphalt was remotely controlled by Mother herself. The levitating chunk of asphalt then suddenly flung forward straight toward me. I jacked the steering wheel hard to the right to get out of the chunk’s path and the vehicle swerved and avoided the chunk by mere inches. However, Mother wasn’t done yet.
Yet another hunk was ripped off the road with a viciously loud crack. It dashed toward me. This time I made a hard left. It flew past, narrowly missing the car. A section of the asphalt some way ahead of me broke free from the road, soared up, and split into two smaller pieces that instantly hurled forward. I was fortunate enough to avoid the first piece of asphalt, but the second one sideswiped the driver’s-side of the vehicle, the asphalt chunk scraping hard against the metal, abrading it. A few more pieces of asphalt tore free from the blacktop and pelted my car. Some of them smashed against the body of the vehicle, leaving dents in the metal. The others slammed into the windshield causing spider’s webs of cracks to appear on it.
There was no telling how much longer Mother would be able to wreak havoc in this place. Still, there wasn’t a shadow of the doubt that I wouldn’t continue to be lucky enough to remain unharmed for much time. Eventually, one of those big pieces of ripped-off asphalt would smash against the vehicle, crush it up, and off me.
Once I thought about that, a huge heavy lump of blacktop darted toward the vehicle. The big chunk arced through the air too fast for me to avoid it in time. So I employed my magic instead, willing the chunk to turn away, out of my way. And it actually diverted, missing the vehicle, and crashing into the wall of the nearby building, punching a big, rugged breach in it.
This reckless, breath-catching joyride with exploding buildings on each side of the road and flying pieces of blacktop pelting my car lasted for a few more minutes and then suddenly the chaos began to die down. I guessed Mother had worn herself out and was too exhausted to continue with the fight. The street was dead silent and lifeless once again, no more bursting buildings and ripping asphalt. The rumble of the vehicle’s engine was the only sound disturbing the stillness. My car was severely maimed and embellished with deep indentations, long scratches, and abrasions all over the body of the vehicle. Yet the engine was still working and the tires were undamaged, so I went on with my ride.
While tooling the car at more than 100 miles an hour down the highway, I was brooding over the subject I had been deliberating on before all hell broke loose when Mother began to annihilate the street. I recollected Frank breaking into that hellish prison where I had been drugged to get me out of there. Sure enough, Frank extricated me from my unpleasant position of being confined to the prison and being drugged, but he hadn’t been all that surprised when he found out what had been going down in that place as if–– as if he had already known what those white-clad thugs with thick foreign accents had been doing to me.
The realization of what it implied soon dawned on me. Now I finally got aware of how the facility guards had managed to defeat me in the ‘Stan and bring me here. The last bit of a puzzle fell in place in my mind like a wooden jigsaw. Now I knew and understood everything.
I went on with my ride out of the city to the facility dubbed the Object 17 where Frank was supposedly awaiting me.
Chapter Six
It looked like an ordinary farmhouse sitting in the vast Nevada desert surrounding it. Yet it was anything but an ordinary farmhouse. At least the house itself was just a cover for what had been put up under it. Nobody who would take a look at this generic-looking dwelling would ever assume that under it was a huge underground facility where a bunch of cruel scientists greedy for wizardry had been experimenting on Mother, the powerful witch possessing magical powers.
I was sure that the guards wouldn’t just let me waltz into the facility, so I got myself prepared for a cruel fight. Contrary to what I had expected, there weren’t any guards anywhere to be seen. But I spied a battered crimson truck parked near to the farmhouse. Its windshield was a spider-web of cracks. It was the same truck Frank and I drove in when fleeing our foes’ armored vehicles giving chase to us yesterday. I also noticed that my brother wasn’t in the truck and that the garage door was wide open. All of these indicated that Frank was already inside the facility. Either he hadn’t been all that keen on waiting for my arrival or he, just like Mother, sensed what was on my mind through his magical power. Either way, I had to hustle my bustle if I wanted to get to Frank and foiled his attempt to extricate Mother in time. The success of my mission was contingent on making it to Frank in time.
I pulled my car next to the beat-up crimson truck outside of a dilapidated house to get a closer look at the car. It was our getaway car, for sure. I jerked the driver’s-side door open and jumped out of the car into the sunny afternoon. I got into the garage and looked around. I knew there was a concealed door that led to a basement. Sure enough, the door had already been opened revealing the stairs leading down. I quickly descended the stairs, taking steps three or four at a time. Once I reached a landing, I saw a lift. The elevator car wasn’t on this floor. I didn’t want to waste my time waiting for it to reach this floor, so I went on to hastily
leap down the stairs, taking them three and four at a time.
As soon as I got to the first underground floor, I heard the alarms blaring. The air was being rent by a high-pitched howl indicating something dangerously wrong was going down in the facility. I had to wait a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the dull red illumination of the flickering emergency lights that run down the length of the corridor before me.
I was only a few feet into the corridor when I ran into the first corpse. It was a facility guard. His frame was ripped to shreds as if he had been assaulted by a pack of ravenous wolves tearing into the flesh of his with their sharp fangs. It was Frank’s job, that was for sure. That nasty piece of work could be produced only by Frank. I had to hurry.
The farther into the facility I advanced the more bodies I encountered. It had been twenty years since I had been to this place, yet I negotiated chambers and hallways confidently and had no apprehension about getting lost. In twenty years this place didn’t change a bit and I remembered the layout all too well.
Finally, I got to the lowest floor. The hallway I went along ended at a T-junction. The left-hand corridor ended in a wall and to my right, a set of heavy-duty steel doors stood ajar. I pushed the door open and entered a pretty vast chamber. The wall across the entrance door had a huge metal door similar to a bank vault’s. It was tightly shut.
Outbreak (The Outbreak Series Book 1) Page 6