by Bob Bannon
Jonah was stupefied. He stood there with a look of quizzical horror on his face. There was another one. Another one like him. Someone who might have more answers. But it sounded like the other one had made a much more brutal escape than how Athena Stapleton described his father taking him. Why hadn’t she mentioned anything? Did she know about the other one?
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. No one even told me there was another one,” Jonah finally said.
“C’mon, kid. You’ve gotta give me some credit. You didn’t know what you are, you didn’t know where you came from, now you’re telling me you’re not in communication with the other one? Starting to like you even less. It’s not one of these two is it?”
At that, the men behind Emma and Eric pushed the two of them forward.
“No! Wait!” Jonah shouted. “They’re not a part of this. I dragged them into this. Let everyone go and I’ll go with you. I’ll help you find the other one. I swear.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Eric interjected. “It’s not like he can just kill us.”
“He killed my dad,” Jonah said bluntly.
“Killed your dad? Me?” Jerrod asked with a surprised laugh. He nodded again and the man at the laptop hit a few more buttons. The image on the television screen changed to what looked like a medical lab. Whoever was on the other end moved the camera closer to a long, enclosed tube that appeared to be filled with liquid. There was a body floating inside attached to multiple wires, an oxygen mask was strapped around the face, but as the camera got closer, and then moved above it, it was obvious that the man inside was Doctor Nikolas Havensby.
“He’s not the species I’m trying to get control of here, Dirt Ball. He may even be the only one on the planet who knows how to eliminate this little situation. Don’t blame me for your misfire.”
Some kind of puzzle piece finally fell into place in Jonah’s mind that he had unconsciously kept forced out of place. Or maybe the others inside him had kept it at bay. He had started the fire in the trash can in the apartment above the store. He had started the fire in the tree in the park when he met Athena Stapleton. He had started the fire that blew up his house and separated him from his father.
“That’s not true!” Jonah screamed. “That can’t be true!”
The green gem started to glow, much brighter than it ever had before. It glowed so bright it looked like it may burn right through the khaki pants. All six camouflage guys, who had seemed to relax their stance a bit, were suddenly back at full attention, all weapons trained on him. Emma and Eric cautiously backed up to the corner of a store, the guards took no notice of them.
“That’s not true!” Jonah screamed again through an enraged face, but with bitter, watery tears in his eyes.
On the last syllable, a lick of flame exploded all around Jonah. It widened and grew and suddenly engulfed him like a wave. It folded into a ball and roiled all around him. Jonah wasn’t sure if he was within the fire or if he was the fire. He could see through it, but didn’t know if he was visible from the other side. He heard rifle shots from all around him and he thought he heard Emma scream, but all of it seemed very far away and no bullets penetrated the flame.
His body suddenly seized and went rigid. He had the oddest feeling like his soul was being sucked out through the top of his head, like his physical consciousness was going someplace else. In a flash of bright reddish-orange light, he was sailing over an arid desert under a red sky. He was flying above wind-blown dunes and corkscrewing down into deep canyons, only to soar once again up over rocky hills, and then there was the sand again.
He bore down through the grainy sand until he came to a dark tunnel and then he was aware of others of his kind. Thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of his species. This is where they came to feed. All at once he knew he was in a long-extinct volcano tube. He knew that millions of years ago volcanoes of all shapes and sizes once poured over the landscape here and that surging streams of molten lava created subterranean tubes like this and those rivers left behind the green gemstones that fed his kind. They would make their way from far below the surface where it was still warm and move up to the tubes during the day to feed on the rocks, then make the return journey before it became too cold this close to the surface.
He was aware of all of them, but they would never be aware of him. They were creatures of instinct, with no real sentience at all. There were larger balls of sand, that he knew were the older of the species, and there were smaller ones who seemed younger. He couldn’t really understand if they were even really aware of each other.
First he heard a tear in the wall as rock began to tumble, and then he saw it, a thin streak of orange light in the dark cave. He watched the wall fall out and the gaping stream of light showed the interior of the lava tube. He could do nothing as one of the larger of his kind and two of the smaller rolled down a short, steep hill through the dusty sand and he knew that meant a starving death on the cold surface of the planet. This was a danger that his species faced when they fed upon the green stones that were planted on a too-brittle wall. A danger they may never be capable of realizing.
He knew that the same happened to him and the other of his kind the day they were picked up by the rover. He understood that he was destined to die there after the green gem was finished. But he was rescued. Rescued by a different species that was wholly unaware of the creature they had inadvertently taken. And then he was given a completely different life.
He was thankful that he had been given this opportunity to know. The knowledge filled and nourished something he had craved since he first found out about his origins. But he also could no longer identify with these small beings. They were no longer a part of him. He felt as if this might have been where he started, but he was a human now, and that’s all he wanted to be.
He knew he was coming back into himself, but first he touched the other that was here. It felt exactly the opposite of the emotion that had just filled Jonah. It was angry, it was dark. It did not wish this. It hated being this. It wished to be unaware once again and knew it could never make that happen. Jonah couldn’t tell where it was or what it had been doing, he was simply aware of it as he had been of all the other creatures, but he did not want to know this other being. He wanted to be away from it. He had the distinct impression it felt the same way.
He could never explain the out-of-body experience the way it actually felt. He knew he had not gone anywhere. It was like having a vision and actually being inside of it at the same time.
When his body allowed his muscles to move again, he instantly fell to his knees. As if some invisible puppeteer had finally given his strings some slack. His head lolled in front of him as his shoulders came down. When he stood once more, Jonah was glaring at Colonel Jerrod with a white-hot rage he had never felt before.
He wanted his friends back.
He wanted to be normal and left alone.
He wanted his father.
He only now realized that the bullets had stopped flying. He wondered how long he had been gone, but knew it had only been minutes at most. They must have stopped wasting their ammunition.
He turned his head to the side, finding Eric and Emma cowering behind a bench by a storefront. He said one word. “Run.”
Without hesitation, they moved at the same time, the guards were far too confused and obviously a little scared by what was happening in front of them to worry about the two teenagers running headlong down the corridor of shops.
“Open fire!” Jerrod yelled, pointing in Jonah’s direction. But the hail of bullets still did no good.
Jonah raised his arms straight over his head and slammed them back down at his sides as if he were slamming something to the ground. When he did, the fireball exploded in every direction.
Jerrod saw the flames fly just over his head as he crouched on the escalator stairs. After it passed, he ran to the second floor and around to what he obviously considered a safer distance but still by th
e railing. The flame knocked the two guards on Jonah’s left backwards off the second floor balcony and both were trying to get up or at least move. It had succeeded in knocking everyone else to the floor, but they were quickly back up and regaining their aim.
Not fast enough though. In one instant Jonah was standing with his fists clenched at his sides, blazing with anger. In the next, it was Devlin. This was how the change was supposed to be, Jonah knew that now too. It was his fear of what he was that held the change back. The realization that it could happen stalled the process even after he became more comfortable with it. Knowing what he was and what he was capable of changed all that. Just as fast as the fear of it melted away, he could allow the others to manifest instantly.
Devlin smiled his trademark, glistening grin of white teeth that turned quickly into a snarl. Zzzzip. He was on them in a heartbeat.
Down the corridor, Emma and Eric had almost been knocked down by the force of the fireball explosion as well, but Eric was fast enough to grab her and pull her towards a planter in the center of the room. The tree was on fire, but they were unharmed. She looked down the hall to see a flash of red dart towards two guards and she surveyed the fire damage which had blown out store windows and set some merchandise alight, and all of that was just down this side of the mall.
“Let’s go,” she said, realizing they were going to have to do something fast.
Eric ran off in the direction of his mother’s store and Emma followed. When they got there, Eric skidded to a stop, grabbing onto the metal cage to stop himself. He tried to force it up twice and it didn’t budge, so he punched it. He looked just inside the doorway and saw a bullet-hole in the control panel.
“Eric?!” His mother yelled through the open door. She came running out and grabbed onto the cage right over his fingers. “Oh my God! What are you…? No, not you too! You have to get out of here!”
She had automatically assumed the two teenagers had been taken captive as well and found an escape, but then came after their parents. Eric thought that seemed like a likely story, should they make it out of here.
“They locked us in. We can’t get out. They’ve blocked the back entrance and they locked this down,” she explained as she shook the cage. “Please go!”
“Emma? What are you two doing here?” Doctor Wong demanded as he appeared at the cage. He could see the fire beginning in the mall. They had heard the blast but they were hoping it was from a rescue party. Now it appeared as if the terrorists had set off some kind of fire bomb. “You two get out, right now.”
Back in the center of the mall, Devlin appeared next to the two guards who had held Emma and Eric just as he was flying in a spinning, roundhouse kick that sent a guard careening to the floor. While at the same time his tail jerked the rife out of the other one’s hand and he spun with all his force to punch him in the jaw so hard the man’s body spun with the force of it and he went down hard.
“Fire, damn it!” Jerrod ordered, and another round of gunfire began with Jerrod reaching for his sidearm and continuously pulling the trigger. Devlin was much too fast. He slammed into the man who was working the laptop and caught him by the neck and continued to the wall, where he bashed the man’s head and just as quickly spun on his heel and landed another roundhouse kick to the other guard standing nearby.
The two guards who had gone over the balcony had just regained their footing, and their weapons. They were just about to open fire as Devlin spread out his arms and moved at his amazing speed catching both of them by their throats and bringing them down to the floor with such a force he cracked the tile beneath them.
Jerrod had emptied his clip in rapid succession when Devlin walked into the center of the room surrounded by the downed guards.“You’d better run, Old Man,” Devlin said with a crack of his neck, seemingly to readjust for battle. “The Ape-Man’s comin’. And, Man! Does he hate you.”
As he kept walking, he hunched over. His shoulders rounded and his skin turned from red to tan, and dense, dark hair sprouted in patches all over. He grew in size as his back widened. As he stepped one clawed foot in front of the escalators, he was fully Adam, the Ape-Man, who looked up at Jerrod and roared, a deafening sound that echoed through the entire mall.
Jerrod threw his side arm down at the beast below him and roared back, although it didn’t have quite the same impact. He grabbed the walkie-talkie that was positioned on the other side of his hip from his empty holster. “This is a general retreat. Repeat. General retreat. No man left behind. That’s an order.” Then he took off running down the second floor of the mall.
“What in the hell was that?” Doctor Wong said.
“Mom, get back. Both of you, get back.” Eric ordered. He grabbed Emma by the hand and moved well away from the cage.
Fortunately for them, Jerrod had come running in their direction, with an angry ape-man not far behind, although Jerrod was on the second floor and Adam was lumbering at top speed across the first in hot pursuit.
“Hey!” Eric yelled. “Down here!”
Adam saw them and moved even faster.
“Seriously. Move!” Eric demanded, and only then did Doctor Wong move Mrs. MacIntyre back into the doorway of the store.
Without stopping, or even missing a beat, Adam grabbed the gate and ripped the entire thing from its round tube-like container above the storefront like one might rip a paper towel off a roll. He swung it over his head and it crashed through another store window on the other side of the corridor, just as he bounded up, slammed one clawed hand into the tiled wall of the mall and swung himself up to the second floor.
It took both of their parents a moment to move after what they’d just seen, but now was not the time to question it. They both moved out and hugged their children. After a hasty reunion, Doctor Wong went back inside and retrieved a rather dazed Athena Stapleton who was now made worse by the billowing smoke inside the mall. Eric directed them toward one of the entrances that was not blocked by a vehicle.
By that time, however, they wouldn’t have had to worry. Both vehicles had already moved out, ignoring both the barrage of bullets fired from police officers and the parked vehicles in their way. The trucks were too large and barreled right through the blockade of police cars and they were armored, so not a single bullet hit its mark. The authorities, who had been on stand-by all night, were caught totally by surprise, but gave chase in the few undamaged vehicles.
Adam was just steps behind Jerrod as the Colonel swung into the stairway toward the roof and slammed the door behind him. Adam simply slammed right through it. As he was chased up more stairs, there were more doors that Adam treated the same way. They were nothing at all to him, but he was still a distance behind.
As he threw open the last door, Adam found himself on the roof of the mall and saw Jerrod charging toward a Blackhawk helicopter that had landed there. He gave chase again, but Jerrod just made it onto the rail of the helicopter as it was already five feet off the ground. By the time Adam got there, the chopper was too high to reach. As Jerrod hoisted himself inside, he gave the beast a final salute.
“Back!” Adam howled and beat the rooftop. “Back!” He howled again louder. The sound vibrated through the silent snowy night. To the people below, it sounded like a sorrowful roar, full of pain.
A minute later, he was Jonah again. “Come back!” He was screaming, angry. “Come back!” he yelled over and over again. But after the fourth time, his voice broke. He could no longer be angry because he only had room for the loss. He had now lost his father twice, and the first was his doing. It all came crashing down. He fell to his knees sobbing, and then roaring in pain himself.
He looked around the dimly lit rooftop, broken and alone. He didn’t know if he had the strength to stand. The calm, breezy snowfall didn’t make sense in his roiling brain. He looked back and saw black smoke pouring from the rooftop stairway and he didn’t care.
After a few moments, the anger returned. He would find Jerrod. He would make him pay. Maybe
he would find the other and let him work out his hate on the Colonel. He would have his father back. He silently promised all of this to his dad.
He stood up slowly. His head spun, not from the transformations, but from the edgy, thick emotion that filled him. He was exhausted and weak. He made his way to a fire escape at the back of the mall and climbed down.
Athena Stapleton was seated on the back of an ambulance wrapped in a blanket and getting checked out by an E.M.T. Doctor Wong proclaimed himself completely fit, but borrowed some medical supplies from that E.M.T. to check out Mrs. MacIntyre, who was also wrapped in a blanket, but leaning against the trunk of a police car.
On their way out of the mall, Eric spun a tale that they were taken from the dance just as their parents had been and they woke up three stores up at the athletic shoe store, but some kind of disturbance made their guard leave without locking them in, so they easily lifted the gate. Emma took in every detail and simply agreed with everything Eric said with an affirming nod. While they had a moment alone, she filled in details, like that he woke up first and she was afraid to leave the store but he talked her into it, and it was his idea to try his mother’s store for a way out. It was a story she felt they might have to tell more than a few times in the coming days.
Just as they had their story worked out, Jonah Havensby appeared, walking along the side of the mall, looking dazed and covered in ash.
“My dad’s in there!” He yelled at the top of his lungs. “My dad!”
The fire-chief alerted the six firemen who were inside fighting the fire as another E.M.T. moved toward Jonah with a blanket, but Emma was much closer. She ran to him and hugged him and he hugged her back.
“You weren’t with us,” she whispered. “You’re going to have to come up with your own story.”
He nodded into her shoulder, enjoying the feel of her long, black hair on his soot-stained face. His knees buckled and they both fell to the ground.