by Jackson Ford
“Careful,” he says.
“Get this straight. In my world, there are no warrants. No court protections. We are right out on the fucking edge. You wanna go talk to Tanner about the law? She doesn’t care, you idiot. You can throw down clever legal arguments, and hide behind as many laws as you want, and it will mean precisely dick. She’ll grab that Constitution you’re waving in her face, and use it to light her cigarette. And by the way, you wanna talk like that to fucking Africa? Of all people?”
He looks at me then. Really looks at me. Like he’s seeing me for the first time.
“I am a black man living in America,” he says slowly, not taking his eyes off me. “You don’t get to talk to me about not being protected by the law. Not ever.”
“That’s not what I…”
“I don’t give a fuck.” His voice is monotone, cold as a switchblade. “I know exactly what it’s like to live in that world. I went to work for the District Attorney for no money so I could find a way out of it. I don’t need some white girl telling me I don’t understand what it’s like.”
Abruptly, he turns, walks off into the darkness.
I want to call after him. Say… shit, I don’t know. That I’m sorry. That I overreacted. That it doesn’t matter how right he is, because people still died up there – and wouldn’t have if he’d just let me handle it. I’m furious with myself, more embarrassed than I’ve ever been in my entire life – but I’m also furious with Nic. He has to know that wasn’t what I meant, he—
I drop my chin to my chest, groan long and hard.
In the end, I do the only thing I can. I get to my feet, and I keep walking.
Annie said she’d meet us at the Main Street Bridge – the one that is now a huge pile of rubble, thanks to the little car chase we had with the Legends biker gang. It’s south of us now, no more than a quarter-mile, just down Wilhardt and left up Main. But we get to the intersection of Wilhardt and Naud, and we can’t go any further. There’s a gigantic sinkhole at the far end of the intersection, cordoned off by tattered yellow police tape.
Nic rubs his jaw. “OK. We can head up there.” He points to the north-east “Up Naud. Drop into the river.”
“Won’t that add like an hour to the trip?” My voice sounds dead. It’s started to rain heavily: big, fat, cold drops spattering my arms and neck and wrists. Leo’s little lightning strikes must have opened up the clouds. It’s not a downpour, not yet, but the rain is steady and hard.
Nic gives me a pitying look. “It’ll add about five minutes. Come on.”
Turns out, Nic is right. In minutes, we hit the concrete slope heading down into the storm drain. I keep my eyes on my feet, not wanting to fall over again – which is totally within the realm of possibility. I’m expecting more hard-packed dirt at the bottom of the slope, but the concrete doesn’t stop.
I look up, startled. We’ve reached the covered-over section of the river, where the entire storm drain is concrete, end to end. The river itself is in a channel running down the centre of the drain. The flat, even surface feels odd under my sneakers.
Nic is maybe fifty yards ahead of me, walking without looking back, moving awkwardly across the concrete. He’s still holding the unconscious Leo. Jesus, I haven’t even had a minute to think about the boy. This isn’t just what he calls the wiggles – and what he did with the lightning was clearly very different to how he electrified the storage unit. It drained his tank completely, and God knows what nerve damage it’s doing to him now.
Who did this to him? Who gave him this ability? And what the hell are they trying to accomplish?
Nic moves up the slope slightly, manoeuvring around a cracked part of the concrete. As I follow, my anger turns on him. How dare he tell me I’m being racist? How can he possibly think that? He has to know what I meant, and he just took it in the worst way possible. And just to be totally clear, I wasn’t the one who took the Africa situation from dangerous to completely fucked-up. That was all on him.
Which doesn’t change the fact that I still tried to tell a black American about how the law wouldn’t protect me. There is no sugar-coating that. I didn’t even consider how it would come across.
It’s not that I don’t see race. People who say that deserve to get their teeth knocked out. But I thought it didn’t matter. I told myself I lived in a diverse, accepting city – that whatever its problems, it still didn’t matter that much what race you were. Hell, I worked – work – with people of colour. Annie is Latinx. Reggie and Africa are black. If—
I let out a frustrated sigh. File all that alongside I can’t be racist, some of my best friends are black.
Nic made the wrong move with Africa. No question. But it was a move he made for the right reasons. He’s a successful lawyer – or was – and being black meant he had to work twice as hard for it. He would take justifiable pride in his skills. And here’s me, telling him he was wrong for doing it. Telling him he can’t possibly understand the situation that Africa and I live with.
All at once, I’m disgusted with myself. Nic relied on training, experience, and self-belief to try and fix a bad situation. When it didn’t work, I told him it was because that training, experience and self-belief wasn’t good enough. I, a white person without even a high school diploma to her name, told the black lawyer that he didn’t understand how the law worked.
But people died. If Nic hadn’t jumped in, Africa would have let us go. You were almost there.
If, if, if.
There’s the distant blat of a siren from behind me. I whirl around anyway, as if the cops were sneaking up on us. The empty storm drain doesn’t exactly calm me down. The amount of people coming after us is growing. Africa. Reggie. The Zigzag Man. Hell, even the National Guard now – Leo might have done some damage, but I can’t believe they’ll just let it go. They’re coming for us.
I am a bundle of nerves, and at this point I am actually looking forward to meeting up with Annie – if possible, the only person who is angrier at me right now than Nic.
The bridge is just ahead. A hulking shape in the darkness. “Can you see Annie?” I shout to Nic. He doesn’t reply.
As we get closer to the ruins of the bridge, the river changes.
By river, I mean the water in the centre channel. It’s burst its banks, gushing over the top and spreading across the concrete. We try to avoid it, but we can’t stop it lapping over the top of our shoes, soaking our socks.
At first, I think it’s just the rain – that what I’m seeing is normal. Annoying, but OK. Then I realise what’s happening. It’s doing this because of the collapsed bridge, which is acting as a dam, the river water bunching up against the crushed concrete slabs. Worse: debris has started to collect. Trash, old tires, hunks of dead bamboo. A floating, swirling mass of flotsam. It doesn’t look like the water is completely dammed yet; some of it is finding a way through, sneaking through the gaps in the wrecked bridge. But add even a little more debris into the mix… maybe stuff that’s floating towards us from upriver, right now… and if the rain keeps up…
I shake myself out of it. A flood is the least of my worries. Not when I’m in a concrete channel with sloped sides I can climb quickly.
“Annie?” I shout. “You there?”
Nic speaks over his shoulder, raising his voice so I can hear. “I think I saw someone up there.” He adjusts his grip on Leo, lifting his arm to point, indicating a spot at the top of the slope, up at the part where Main Street becomes the Main Street Bridge.
“Is it Annie?”
“Dunno. Let’s go.”
“How is…? Is Leo OK?”
“Still out.”
That’s the extent of our conversation.
We make our way up the sloped side of the channel, coming out under a miraculously-still-upright power line on Main Street itself, which is empty of traffic. On the other side of the street, there’s a figure, silhouetted against a distant streetlamp. Annie. Has to be.
“Over here,” I shout, passing N
ic and moving to a slow jog. Man – now we have to explain to her about what went down at Dodger. That’s going to be a fun conversation, although it’s not like she can get any more pissed at me than she is already.
As I cross the street, I stop cold.
It’s not Annie. It’s not even a woman.
It’s Robert.
The frontman for the Legends. The biker gang from this morning.
Same patched leather vest, same hulking, tattooed arms. Beneath his bushy beard, there’s a very faint smile.
And around him, moving slowly out of the shadows: more of them.
I don’t know how these jack-offs knew where we’d be. I don’t care either. I have had one hell of a night, and I’m not about to let goth Santa Claus and his elves make it any worse. And since they know what I can do already, I figure I have free rein to throw some more concrete slabs at them.
Except—
Where are their guns?
They don’t have any rifles with them. No pistols or shotguns. Not a single firearm.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I never thought the absence of guns would scare me, but it does. I quickly scan the environment – nobody around, no phones pointed at us. A couple of security cameras. I crunch the insides of those, turn my attention back to the bikers. There’s a concrete trash bin on its side at my two o’clock. That’s a good start. I reach over and grab it, lifting it upwards.
“Uh-uh.” Robert lifts a finger. “You might not want to do that.”
“You might not want to try and stop me.”
“I’m sorry – who the fuck are these people?” says Nic.
Robert ignores him. “Just saying,” he tells me. “Your friend probably won’t be too pleased if you do.” He has the even, relaxed tone of someone walking down a beach.
“My fr— What?”
But I know what.
Annie.
“Pretty simple situation,” Robert says. “She’s with some of our buddies. I have to make a call every fifteen minutes to keep them happy. I don’t make that call, and well…” He shrugs. “Drop the trash can, honey.”
Behind me, Nic has gone dead still. Very slowly, I set the bin down. The clunk as it touches tarmac is way too loud. At my sides, my fists are balled tight enough for my nails to cut into my palm. I don’t care how much bad blood there is between me and Annie, if they’ve touched her…
Robert’s smile gets wider. “Good girl.”
“Eat shit, grandpa.”
He actually laughs, then gestures to his right. “Our ride is this way. Come on.”
“What do you want?”
“Nothing to do with me.” He sucks his lip. “Pop wants to talk.”
“And just who the fuck is Pop?”
“The boss.” His eyes bore into mine, and despite his smile, there’s zero humour in them. “And trust me, by the time this is over, you’re gonna know exactly who the fuck Pop is.”
TWENTY-NINE
Reggie
It takes Reggie a good few minutes to get the story out of Africa.
He is almost incoherent with rage, yelling into the phone. “An electric boy,” he keeps saying, using the words like the most searing insult imaginable. “He touch me and ba! Throw me ten metres back. And Teggan is helping him!”
Reggie’s breathing too fast, her breaths too shallow, her diaphragm clenching. It takes everything she has to slow it down.
Thank Christ Moira can’t hear her. Africa’s on a cellphone connection, while Moira speaks to Reggie over an open comms line, currently muted. Since Reggie can’t type messages, only dictate them, she has to mute the comms line whenever she speaks to Africa. And the longer she mutes it…
As if on cue, Moira speaks into her ear. “Ms McCormick – we’re getting a lot of National Guard chatter. Something’s happened at Dodger Stadium.”
There’s a horrible moment where she thinks Moira is going to ask Africa for an update too. It doesn’t come. “… Um, yes, Roger that. Looking now.”
Reggie long ago built backdoors into the communications networks of the Coast Guard, LAPD, fire department… and the National Guard. She finds it quickly, eyes narrowing as she listens. The voices on the channel are urgent, panicked, talking over each other, dissolving into bursts of static, but Reggie can still pick up on a few words. Lightning strike. Four dead. Six… no, seven injured.
Reggie closes her eyes for a moment. Between what happened at the storage unit, and the garbled story coming from Africa, she’d guessed most of this already – if not the specifics, then definitely the broad outline. But to have it confirmed…
Teagan, what in God’s name are you doing?
But of course, Reggie knows that, too. The girl doesn’t want to let the child – whoever the child is – fall into Tanner’s hands. Or hers.
Reggie hadn’t really thought about it until now – she’d spent so long as head of China Shop that the idea of not being included was almost completely beyond consideration. And yet, Teagan – and Nic Delacourt apparently, God knows how he’s involved – have gone off on their own. Maybe Annie too, although Africa says he hasn’t seen her. Reggie has worked hard to build her relationships with her team, and to be frozen out like this…
“I need solutions now, Ms McCormick,” Tanner barks in her ear. “Is this related to the incident at the storage facility? I’m seeing plenty of weather activity over the LA area – can we confirm whether this was just a normal lightning strike?”
“I… I don’t—” Reggie clears her throat. “I don’t know yet. I’m going to send the team down there, and I’ll see if there’s any camera footage from around the stadium.”
“What about the communication issues with Ms Frost and Ms Cruz? What’s our status on that?”
“Working on it.”
“Maybe we should get some more boots on the ground. Navy SEAL headquarters are in San Diego – they’re not who I usually use, and I’d have to fast-track their security clearances and do some serious arm-twisting, but—”
“No.” Reggie’s voice sounds a lot calmer than she feels. “It’s under control. We’ve got this.”
“A SEAL team might—”
“Right now, we don’t even know if what happened at Dodger Stadium is linked to the storage unit,” Reggie says. The lies come easily, far too easily. “We could be deploying them for nothing. At least let me do some more digging.”
Tanner digests this. “You have one hour. And keep existing communications open.”
A thought flashes across Reggie’s mind. “I’m going to shut down all comms and reboot. It might be some kind of kernel panic that hasn’t resolved.”
On any other night, Tanner would probably have detected the note of bullshit in Reggie’s voice, but not tonight. She has a million things on her mind, and doesn’t have time to process the reasoning. “Fine. Get it done.”
With a sigh of relief, Reggie shuts down all comms systems. Then, raising the phone to her ear, she says, “Did you get all that?”
“Uh-huh.” Africa still sounds furious. He sniffs loudly. “Is OK. They will not have gone far.”
“Right. Look, we need to strategise. If—”
“No.” He coughs, harsh and hard, almost like a roll of thunder on its own. “Before, I did not know what was what. Now I know exactly what to do.”
There’s something in his voice that chills Reggie to the bone.
“This boy is dangerous,” he continues. “He already kill many people. It’s just like before, with the one who can cause the earthquake. What is this boy going to do if we let him keep going for too long?”
“You can’t…” She licks her lips. “We can’t kill him.”
“You not have a problem with killing the other boy. The earthquake one. What is different here?”
“Matthew Schenke,” Reggie says, through gritted teeth, “was a clear and present danger. Whoever this boy is, he doesn’t—”
Africa speaks over her. “I not get surprised this time. Not f
or this one. I will follow them, I will find them and I will do what I have to.”
“Africa. Stop.” Reggie’s diaphragm clenches again as she raises her voice. She’s working herself too hard, her frail body starting to protest. “Think for a second.”
“I am thinking,” he says. “And this is what Mrs Tanner would ask me to do, if she knew. I tell the lie to protect you Reggie, because I respect you, but I am not going to pretend this boy will live. Whether I do it or someone else does it…”
“You are way, way out of line.”
He sighs. “I will protect you for as long as I can, Reggie. But you are the one who is out of line here.” A rustle of fabric over the phone, as if he’s getting to his feet.
“Listen to me. This isn’t like before. Teagan is with this boy. She’s helping. She wouldn’t do that if—”
“She help him because he is like her. Teggan is my friend, I never be with China Shop if not for her… but I also know that she does not think straight. She thinks she can fix anything. But she cannot fix this.”
Reggie opens her mouth to tell him no, he can’t do this, how could he even be thinking about it? But the words won’t come. And even if they did, what difference would they make?
Africa pauses, as if weighing his words. “I am sorry you cannot see what I see, Reggie. I did not want any of this. We should all be working together. But if I am the only one who can do what has to be done, yaaw, then I will.”
“Africa. Africa!”
But he’s gone. And when Reggie tries to call him back, the line goes to voicemail.
She sags back in her seat, suddenly aware of just how much pain she’s in. The space between her shoulder blades, at the base of her neck, feels as if someone has jammed a red-hot poker into it. Her diaphragm is actually twitching now, sending helpless little coughs up her throat. The sensations are familiar, but she can’t remember a time when they were this bad.
Africa on his own mission. Moira wanting updates, threatening to send in the SEALs. National guardsmen, dead. Teagan and Annie, AWOL. Another child with extranormal abilities. And Reggie, at the middle of it all, unable to do a damn thing.