Bitter Sixteen

by Stefan Mohamed

  But they wouldn’t, would they? They couldn’t.

  Because they have no real power.

  And who does?

  The confusion evaporated. The cotton wool that had built up in my ear drums fell away, and my head was no longer thick. All I could see was that I had to go after Blondie, and I had to take him down.

  I gently pulled away from Kloe. She looked into my eyes with her glassy red ones and I was taken back to opening night, when she looked at me in the rain, just as she was doing now. The end of the world comes in all shapes and sizes. She swallowed several times and managed to whisper, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I have to get him,’ I said. ‘I have to go after that guy.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘What? What do you mean? Why?’

  ‘We just lay here,’ I said, keeping my voice low and one eye on Connor and Eddie. They had their hands full with Billy, securing him to a chair with someone’s sweatshirt, and I had a feeling they wouldn’t sign off on this idea. ‘Me and Connor and Eddie. We’re the ones with the superpowers, we’re the ones who are supposed to change things. To help.’

  ‘But you couldn’t have done anything,’ said Kloe. ‘It was all just . . . it happened so fast.’

  ‘I could have,’ I said. ‘I could have.’

  Kloe stared at me . . . and then she did something strange. She nodded. ‘Go,’ she said. ‘Go and do it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice trembling but still strong. She kissed me. ‘Go.’

  ‘Go where?’ said Connor. Somehow he’d managed to appear right next to us again, and I jumped. Eddie was kneeling down next to Hannah, talking softly.

  ‘I’m going after that other gunman,’ I said. ‘The blonde guy.’

  ‘You are not.’

  ‘I am. I have to. I have to do something. We let this happen.’

  ‘We didn’t let anything —’

  ‘We let this happen!’ I said, finally losing my temper. I pointed at the bodies, at the blood, at the terrified people hugging one another on the floor, still cowering behind tables even though the danger had passed, and at the well-dressed old man, who had managed to crawl over to the shot girl and was now putting pressure on the wound, talking calmly to her, making sure she stayed conscious. ‘We’re meant to stop this sort of thing!’ I said. ‘Surely this is why we have these bloody powers in the first place? This is why we’re here!’

  ‘Stanly, we couldn’t have —’

  ‘Yes we could! We could have done something! I could have deflected all their bullets without even moving. Taken their guns away. Beaten them to the ground. But I didn’t, because I was too scared. Well, bollocks to that. That’s not good enough.’

  Connor was angry, but I could tell that at least part of him agreed with me. I could see it in his eyes. He glanced towards Eddie. Any second he would call him over, and Eddie would try to stop me. He was strong. He’d probably be able to. Connor probably could as well. Definitely, in fact. I don’t want to fight them.

  So don’t.

  ‘Stanly —’ began Connor.

  ‘I have to,’ I said, and ran.

  It was dark outside now, and the air had cooled. It cleared my head, wiping away the confusion and pushing my supper back down to my digestive system where it belonged. The urge to retch wasn’t entirely gone, but I fought it. No. Calm down. No time for this. I could hear Connor and Eddie shouting my name, and people in the street were speaking to me urgently, asking what had happened. No time. ‘Did you see a blonde guy run out of here?’ I asked. ‘Ratty-looking, holding a gun?’

  Someone nodded, and pointed across the road towards an alley. ‘Thanks.’ I dashed across the road, ignoring the barrage of follow-up questions, and headed down the alley into the beckoning darkness.

  Let’s hope he did go this way, eh?

  I ran, picked up speed, left the ground and flew, head first, arms by my sides, down the alley, past bins overflowing with rustling rubbish and newspapers, past empty drinks cartons and cigarette butts and metal doors that led nowhere, and red bricks and boarded up windows, the wind dampening my fear and fury, a slipstream forming in my wake. Within a minute I was bearing down on Blondie, his boots crashing against the tarmac, his breath coming in frantic gasps. I flexed my mind don’t want to kill him yet want to hurt him first don’t lose control and pulled his feet out from under him. He flipped over and hit the ground chin first with a yelp of pain. I landed and waited for him to stand up. I wanted him to look me in the eye.

  He turned around, took me in, frowned. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I was in the bar.’

  A sneering smile. ‘Citizen’s arrest, is it?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Thought not.’ He reached into his coat and drew his gun. I’d been wondering about bullets. Was I fast enough? We’ll find out now. I flexed my brain and felt that invisible bubble press out in the direction I wanted, just as Blondie pulled the trigger. The bullet changed direction totally and hit the wall, shedding sparks. Half a second later and it would have been too late.

  Reflexes are definitely improving.

  But maybe pre-empt it next time, eh?

  Blondie was momentarily frozen and that was my moment. I whipped his gun away with an invisible mental tentacle and punched him with my brain, right in the face, as hard as I could. His head snapped back and he cried out, and I lifted him off the ground, holding him in the air. I floated the gun up off the floor and pointed it at him, and he quivered. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Don’t, I’ve got, I’ve got money —’

  I didn’t speak, just moved the gun closer to his face, brushing his cheek with the hot barrel. He was pleading, sneering, threatening, trying anything, but I barely heard him. Don’t shoot him.

  Wasn’t gonna.

  Instead I turned the gun around and whipped him hard upside the head, vicious enough to drew blood. Then I dropped the gun and hurled him against a wall, letting him sprawl to the ground, and before he could try to get back up I grabbed him again and hurled him against the opposite wall. Down he went again, and I let loose with more psychic punches, a thunderous avalanche of blows, so much harder than I could ever have managed with my fists, and pretty soon his nose was broken and his lip was split and I knew his eyes would blacken and he was screaming for me to stop. For mercy. My mercy! He’d just killed people and he wanted mercy. I carried on hitting him and now he was practically unconscious and —

  I was barely aware of it before it took me out. There was something, the suggestion of a heavy mass at the very edge of my peripheral vision, and a white blur, and then I was being grabbed from behind by powerful arms, far too powerful, utterly unyielding, and there was a hand over my mouth, and wow, sleepy, really sleepy, like, suddenly, properly, hey, where’s Blondie gun, gone, I’m . . . seriously . . .

  . . .

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  THE FIRST THING I became aware of, as consciousness dribbled slowly back, was my arm. No . . . both my arms. They felt like they do when you fall asleep on top of them, like unresponsive implements, long bags full of sand that won’t do what you tell them to do. Then I remembered my eyes, and forced them open. I was lying face down and my mind was spinning around and around, my vision a haze of dots and stars, and as I started to regain feeling in my flesh I became aware of hard, cold ground beneath me, and bits of grit biting into my face, and dust in my nose and mouth. I coughed and my body jerked harshly. It wasn’t nice, but it helped to shake me more fully into wakefulness. Motor control started to return, sluggish but definitely present, and I pulled myself up into a sitting position and immediately slumped backwards. Luckily there was a wall behind me, but I hit it a bit too hard and my head swam with fresh pain. Everything shifted blearily for several more seconds before coming abruptly and harshly into focus. A cheap cinematic trick.

  I was in a small
square room lit by a single buzzing bulb, with a low ceiling and rusty brown walls. The concrete floor was dusty and the only really noticeable feature besides the light was the door – heavy-looking, metal, no knob.

  Let me guess: it can only be opened from the outside. Let’s stop and marvel at that.

  OK. Kidnapped. That’s . . . really very bad.

  But by —

  Um, have we not noticed the little girl in the red pyjamas?

  She was sitting against the opposite wall, staring interestedly at me. Her trainers were dirty, as was her face, but her eyes were bright. There was a black scarf on the floor next to her. ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘Hello.’

  I rubbed my head. ‘Did you happen to get the serial number of the elephant that trampled me?’

  That got a laugh. It was a lame joke, but every little helps in desperate situations. ‘It was Smiley Joe,’ she said.

  Smiley Joe . . .

  Oh no.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I said, trying to ignore the chilly heat prickling up and down my spine. ‘How do you . . .’

  ‘I saw him bring you in here. You were asleep.’

  ‘He took you as well?’ She nodded. ‘How long ago?’ A shrug. I looked at my watch. Just before midnight. What time had I left Blue Harvest? It seemed so long ago. Half past eight? Nine o’clock? It hadn’t taken me long to catch up with Blondie . . .

  You were about ready to kill him.

  This is possibly not the time for that thought process.

  Twenty past nine? So about two and a half hours? If it was even the same day. I looked back at the little girl. ‘How long have I been unconscious?’

  ‘A few hours, I think.’

  ‘OK . . . what’s your name?’

  ‘Tara. What’s yours?’

  ‘Stanly.’ I held out my hand and she shook it solemnly. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ I got unsteadily to my feet.

  ‘You don’t look very good,’ said Tara.

  ‘I feel worse.’ Is this what being chloroformed feels like? Is that what he used? Or does the bastard have magic hands that make you unconscious?

  Oh who cares, let’s get out of here. I staggered over to the door and put my eye up against the crack at the edge. All I could see was black. I closed my eyes and flexed my brain, thinking unlock, unlock, unlock, but nothing happened. I suppose it doesn’t work like that. I scanned the room again and started feeling my way along the walls, trying to be calm and methodical when what I was actually feeling was tentacles of panic reaching up from a black lake of dread in the pit of my stomach. Stay calm. Breathe. I felt around the entire room and tried a few psychic punches, but it was entirely solid and nothing yielded. Where the hell were we? I could hear a muffled rattling somewhere . . . Tube train? I tried hitting the ceiling. Still nothing. ‘Bollocks!’

  ‘You shouldn’t swear,’ said Tara.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. The incongruity of the order, and the serious little voice that delivered it, actually beat back some of the panic. Some.

  ‘Well,’ said Tara, ‘that’s what Jacqueline says, but she actually swears quite a lot of the time. The other week she dropped a tray and all the stuff on it broke and she said the S-word.’

  ‘Who’s Jacqueline?’

  ‘My foster mum,’ said Tara. ‘Jacqueline. Mrs Rogers.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘So you’re . . .’

  ‘Not an orphan,’ said Tara. ‘I don’t think I’m an orphan, anyway. I think my parents were in trouble and they left me on Jacqueline’s doorstep when I was a baby. I don’t remember them, though.’ She hugged her knees, and I looked around helplessly, trying to breathe normally. Come on. Organised thoughts. You’ve been kidnapped by a horrific monstrosity of some kind. That’s extremely bad, and probably well worth freaking out over. But there’s also a small child here. So you owe it to her to not be scared.

  I forced a smile, hoping it looked friendly and reassuring rather than fake and desperate. ‘Are you . . . hungry?’

  Tara nodded. I put my hand in my pocket, remembering a Twix that I’d bought at the cinema and forgotten to eat. It was melted and squashed but she took it with a smile. ‘Thank you.’ She started to eat it slowly, delicately licking the melted chocolate off her fingers, and I stopped trying to escape and sat and watched her eat. It’s amazing how old you feel when you’re nine, but when a sixteen-year-old looks at a nine-ish-year-old they seem so tiny, so young. When she finished the Twix she scrunched the wrapper up and put it in the pocket of her pyjamas. She’s been brought up well. She won’t even litter a horrible room where she’s been trapped by a monster. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘No problem. So . . . do you know what happened? How did Smiley Joe . . . where did he . . .’

  ‘Mr and Mrs Rogers had an argument earlier on,’ said Tara. ‘It was the first time I ever heard them argue. Really, ever in my life. And they were shouting and I didn’t like it so I went out for a walk, and I got lost . . . and I’m not sure, I think I fell asleep, and I woke up here.’ She pointed at the black scarf on the floor. ‘I was blindfolded.’

  Jesus. That’s horrendous. ‘You don’t remember him bringing you here, at all?’

  She shook her head. ‘No.’ To her credit, she seemed fairly together about the whole thing. I could only imagine the kind of state I’d have been in if something like that had happened to me, even at my age. I tried my smile again. ‘Well, don’t worry, OK? I’m not going to let anything happen to you. We’ll find a way out, and I’ll take you home.’

  Tara nodded. It looked as though she actually believed me. ‘I’ve got special powers, you know,’ I said.

  She didn’t look impressed, which I supposed was fair enough. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. Check it out.’ I jumped to my feet, lifted up off the ground and hung in the air, enjoying the way her nonplussed expression erupted into an awestruck supernova of joy.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘You can fly, that is amazing!’

  ‘Can do this as well.’ I thought at her, and she floated up into the air to join me, shrieking with delight.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she said, again. ‘Oh my God, how are you doing that? How are you making me do that?’

  ‘Told you,’ I said. ‘Special powers.’ Tara was grinning widely, and it made me grin too. I actually felt a good deal less scared now.

  Let’s hope she does too.

  I brought us back down to the ground. ‘How come he managed to get you?’ she asked. ‘If you’ve got those powers?’

  Ouch. Awkward. ‘I kind of . . . I was distracted,’ I said.

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘I was chasing a bad guy,’ I said. ‘He’d . . . done some really bad things. He killed some people.’ Why the hell are you telling her this, you dickhead? ‘Anyway. So . . . yeah, I chased him, and I’d caught up with him, and Smiley Joe must have sneaked up on me.’

  ‘Did you kill the man?’ asked Tara.

  ‘No!’ I said. ‘No. I hurt him, and I probably shouldn’t have . . .’ Probably? Probably shouldn’t have? Well done. Anyone would think you’d never spoken to an impressionable child before. ‘But no, I didn’t kill him.’

  She nodded. ‘That’s good. Even if someone’s killed someone, then you shouldn’t kill them. Killing’s always bad. Oliver . . . Mr Rogers . . . he fought in a war. I don’t know which one. And I heard him say once that the first time he killed someone it was the worst thing in his life he ever did. I wasn’t supposed to hear, though.’

  ‘Oh. Um . . . well, thanks.’ Interesting kid.

  She smiled. ‘That’s OK.’ Really interesting.

  I took another brief, futile look around, thinking hard at the stupid door and the stupid walls, trying not to let ‘mildly peturbed’ blossom into ‘oh Jesus we’re completely screwed’. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Well . . . not to alarm you or anything, but I’m having
trouble with the door. And the walls. I think . . . I think we might have to wait until he comes back.’ Oh God, really?

  ‘Really?’ said Tara. My thoughts exactly, mate.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘But it’s OK.’ It is? In what possible way? ‘It’s OK,’ I said again, probably for Tara’s benefit, ‘because I’ll be ready for him. And I’ll fight him. And I’ll get us out of here.’

  ‘All right.’ Tara shifted uncomfortably. ‘It’s cold.’ She took the scarf and wrapped it around her neck, shivering, and I crawled over and hesitantly put my arm around her. She seemed grateful. ‘What do you know about Smiley Joe?’ she asked.

  ‘Not a lot, really. Just stories I’ve heard.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Tara. ‘I know he’s a monster and that he eats children. I was at a sleepover and one of the girls told us a story about him, and they said he could turn into a giant spider.’ Christ alive, I hope not. ‘But I don’t think that’s true. Other kids at school said he was something from Hell, or just a mad man with a big head.’