The Strike Trilogy

by Charlie Wood

  “I know, me too. I’m thinking about having everyone over my house in a couple of weeks, though. My parents might be going away.”

  Tobin looked to her with a grin. “Everyone that was here? Don’t you think your dad might be a little mad if you have a party with, like, fifty people?”

  She shrugged. “I guess. I just want everyone to hang out again soon.”

  “What is it with you and all this hanging out with everybody stuff lately, anyway? You’re going crazy with this.”

  “I know. But that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about tonight. Why I wanted you and Chad to come.”

  “It is?”

  “Yeah. You and Chad…you guys are my best friends. I’ve been hanging out with you two longer than anyone else in my life. And when we go away to college next year, I don’t want that to change.”

  “It won’t.”

  “It might. My sister is friends with nobody that she went to high school with. Nobody. And she goes to college like twenty minutes away.”

  “Well, that won’t happen with us.”

  “It might. It probably will.”

  “No, it won’t. Because I won’t let it.”

  “Well, then, we have to make sure. Let’s promise, tonight, seriously, the three of us, that no matter what happens next year, we will always stay friends. Just like this.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m serious, Tobin.”

  He laughed. “I am, too! It had never even crossed my mind that we wouldn’t be friends.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  A silence.

  “Because, hanging out with you guys…that’s like my favorite thing in the world.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. And don’t make fun of me for saying that.”

  Tobin laughed. As they walked along the beach, he put his arm around Jennifer and kissed her on the side of her head.

  “Okay.”

  As Tobin and Jennifer returned to the party, Tobin’s phone rang.

  “Uh-oh.”

  “What?”

  “It’s my mom.”

  He let it ring.

  “So? Aren’t you gonna answer it? She probably just wants to know where you are.”

  “Yeah, I know, but she probably also found out that I left, and will now somehow find a way to actually kill me through the phone. I’ll just wait till I get home.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. I said something pretty crappy to her today, anyway, so I should really go back and apologize.” He headed for the street. “Tell Chad we should get lunch tomorrow, okay?”

  “Okay. And remember what I told you, Tobin: if you see any more disappearing old men in red coats, I want you to call me. I can get you some help.”

  He laughed. “Ha, ha. Very funny, Jen. Talk to you later.”

  “Bye, Tobin.”

  Walking along a quiet road, Tobin was about halfway home when his phone rang again.

  “Geez, Mom, I’m on my way. Take it easy.”

  But, when he looked at the phone, Tobin saw that it read: UNKNOWN CALLER. He answered it.

  “Hello?”

  A woman replied. “Please, whoever this is, don’t call the police.” She sounded as if she had been crying.

  Tobin was startled. “What? Who is this?”

  “Please!” the woman cried. “He said if you don’t come right now, or—or if you call the police, he’ll—he’ll—”

  She sobbed. Tobin could no longer understand her. He grew frightened.

  “Who is this? Why are you—Hello…? Hello?”

  But the woman didn’t answer. Instead, a man’s voice came from the phone. It was hushed, calm, and quiet.

  “You better get over here, Tobin. As fast as you can. Don’t stop and don’t ask for help. You are the only one who can help her.”

  The boy was nauseous. His hands shook.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Jackson’s Bookstore,” the man said. “At the end of the Chapman Bridge. Now. Before it’s too late.”

  And then the man hung up.

  “Hello?” Tobin asked. “Hello...?!”

  The boy looked at the screen of this phone, then put it back in his pocket. With his stomach roiling, he looked down the street toward his house, then back in the direction of where he came. Suddenly, he felt a warmth behind his eyes, and saw a quick flash of blue light.

  Tobin turned around and walked in the opposite direction of his house. All of his thoughts faded away and he had a fierce, unwavering focus. He walked toward the Chapman Bridge.

  It began to rain.

  Usually by this time, Susan Wilheim was home for the night. Her bookstore was closed, she had enjoyed a nice glass of wine with her husband, and they were ready to watch their favorite late night TV program. But on this night, on this suddenly stormy, October night, she had been faced with a nightmare.

  Susan was tied by glowing purple ropes to a chair in the middle of her bookstore. She was gagged, sobbing, and terrified. With tears streaming down her face, she looked to the man on the other side of the room.

  Jonathan Ashmore, the pale man in the purple suit, was standing at a large picture window and watching the pounding rain that had just started to fall outside of the bookstore. He was waiting for someone to appear at the other end of the Chapman Bridge, directly outside the window, but that person was not here yet. With an impatient grunt, he wiped away the condensation on the window and looked toward Susan.

  “Can you please stop all that crying and struggling?” he asked. “I know you’re playing the ‘damsel-in-distress’ role and everything, but really, that’s just annoying.”

  Jonathan walked to her and turned on a lamp. She looked up at him.

  “Take it easy,” he said, frustrated, chomping away on his gum. “No one’s gonna hurt you, okay? I told you: I’m just gonna wait here, do my thing, and then…I’ll be on my way.”

  Thunder rumbled. The wind picked up. Jonathan walked to the window and looked to the other end of the bridge. A boy was there, about seventeen years old. Tobin.

  “Ah,” Jonathan said, walking back to Susan. “Places everyone.

  “It’s show time.”

  At the other end of the Chapman Bridge, Tobin was standing in the rain and listening to it patter the dirt and pebbles around him.

  “What am I doing?” he asked himself. Looking down, he saw that his clothes were drenched to his skin, and his hair was in wet pieces across his forehead. He was not sure how he had gotten there, or even how long it took. “This is insane, I have to call the police.”

  The boy took his phone from his pocket, but then looked up at the bookstore on the other side of the bridge. A woman appeared there in a large picture window, pushed there by somebody. She was tied to a chair. She was crying.

  Tobin’s thoughts faded away. He walked nearer to the store.

  Another person appeared in the window. It was a pale man in a purple suit. He reached over and put his hand on the woman’s shoulder. He was chewing gum.

  A flash of white. A burst of heat. With quick, heavy footsteps, Tobin walked across the bridge. He felt his fists clench, his abdomen tighten, and his back straighten. He was ready. He did not know what was about to happen, yet he knew he had been waiting for this moment his entire life.

  Lightning streaked across the sky. Thunder boomed.

  In the quiet bookstore, Jonathan pushed Susan away from the window and against a far wall.

  “There you go,” he said. “Now just sit here and watch. Should be interesting.”

  Jonathan looked down and saw that she was crying.

  “Loo
k,” he said, “you’re gonna be fine.” He turned off the lights around the room. “If everything goes the way it should, I’ll leave here, and it’ll be like none of this ever happened. You won’t even remember seeing my handsome face.”

  The pale man smiled at Susan, then popped a piece of gum into his mouth and crouched in front of the window, his back to her. As he stared at the floor, he thought.

  “You know,” he said, “this isn’t really my style, to be honest. I usually don’t like to get involved in things that are this big—and believe me, this is big—but this one was just too good to pass up. So, I just gotta be the bad guy for a bit, you gotta be the victim, and then that’s that. Okay?”

  Behind her back, Susan rubbed her wrists together. She found that she could move her arms, just a bit. When she looked down, she saw that the purple glow around her ankles had begun to fade.

  Jonathan snapped his gum, picking at a spot on the floor.

  “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” he said. “It’s not like you have much of a choice, do you?”

  Jonathan realized the room was silent. He turned around.

  Susan was free from the chair and standing over him.

  The pale man frowned. “Aw, dammit.”

  Susan reared back and kicked Jonathan in the groin, causing him to fall over with a grunt. In a panic, Susan ran to a phone and dialed 9-1-1.

  “9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

  “Please!” she cried into the phone. “Somebody’s here and he’s going to—”

  But, the phone was ripped away from Susan and thrown across the store. Slowly, she turned around.

  “That,” Jonathan said, “was not smart.”

  The pale man pushed the terrified woman into a corner, trapping her there. As he talked, he flexed his fingers, open and closed, open and closed.

  “I was having a good day,” he said. “There hasn’t been one of those in a while, and I was starting to enjoy it. But now…now it’s happening again, and it’s all your fault. You ruined everything.”

  With wide eyes, Susan watched Jonathan’s fingers. They grew into twisted claws—long, bony, skinny claws with translucent talons on their ends.

  “I have my good days, Susie Q, and I have my bad days. But you just turned this into a very, very bad day.”

  Jonathan pulled her close and opened his mouth. Suddenly, it was filled with snake-like fangs—disgustingly yellow and dripping with saliva.

  Susan screamed. “Somebody please help me!”

  Glass shattered. Thunder boomed. Lightning lit up the night. Jonathan spun around. Susan stopped crying.

  There, in the dark shadows, was Tobin. He was standing in the broken picture window frame, with his clothes soaked and pressed against him. As he stared at the floor, with his fists at his sides, his chest was rising and falling with deep breaths. Another lightning bolt lit up the darkness around him.

  Jonathan was transfixed by the boy in the window. He pulled Susan nearer as she tried to get away.

  “Wait,” he said. “Wait.”

  A thunderclap rumbled. Tobin looked up. His white, swirling eyes looked like they were dead.

  “Let her go,” he said.

  “No,” Jonathan said back, amused. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Tobin jumped down and walked toward Jonathan. The pale man grew nervous.

  “You—you really think I’d do this alone, Tobin? No, I always save this kind of stuff for my friends. They enjoy it much more than I do.”

  With a snap of his fingers, Jonathan summoned Nelson and Miller from the shadows. The towering duo was made up of two huge men in their early thirties, with the bodies of weightlifters, purple suits like Jonathan’s, and white, zombie-like faces. As they stood on either side of Jonathan, the pale man looked to Tobin with a smile.

  “Plus,” he said, “I’d just hate to ruin another suit.”

  Tobin was calm. His fists were raised, and his eyes were now glowing with a blue, electric light. Lightning streaked across the sky.

  Jonathan pointed at the boy. “Take him down.”

  Nelson and Miller started toward Tobin. Miller took the first swing, but the boy grabbed the goon’s fist, swung him around, and used his own momentum to toss his huge body into a bookcase. The shelves came tumbling down on top of the goon, sending books and shards of wood scattering across the floor.

  Lightning struck and thunder boomed.

  Crouched in the corner, Jonathan was watching the fight with Susan. She shouted and tried to get away from him, but he held her wrists tightly, and then took a small cloth bag from his pocket.

  “When you awake,” he said, pouring sand from the bag into his palm, “you’ll have no memory of me, the kid, or anything that happened tonight. Now sleep.”

  Jonathan blew the sand into Susan’s face and she dropped to the floor, her eyes fluttering.

  Near the bookcases, Tobin heard the woman fall and was distracted, turning around. In that instant, Nelson tackled him and they tumbled to the floor. Struggling, they awkwardly—but violently—exchanged several brutal punches, until Tobin felt Nelson push off of him and stand. When the boy looked up, he saw the goon looming over him.

  Nelson smiled. Reaching to his waist, he removed two shining knives from his belt and held them in between his fingers. Then, snapping his wrists, he flung the knives down at Tobin.

  The boy’s first instinct was to close his eyes and turn away, but then he stopped: he saw that the blades were tumbling toward him through the air ever so slowly, like they were traveling through gelatin. Reaching across his body, Tobin grabbed a book from the floor and held it in front of his face. He heard two THUNKS! in the book, one right after the other, and then everything returned to normal speed.

  Tobin turned the book over and looked at its front. The two knives were sticking in its cover.

  Nelson was stunned. “What the...? How did you...?”

  Tobin stood up. His thoughts suddenly returned to him; they were fast, confused images, like somebody was replaying everything that had happened over the past ten minutes in fast-forward. The boy was shaken, his knees weak and his arms trembling. His eyes were no longer glowing blue.

  “Neat trick,” a voice said from behind him.

  The boy turned around. Jonathan was there.

  “But I bet you can’t beat this one.”

  The pale man smiled. As his mouth stretched into a grotesque crescent moon across his face, his teeth once again elongated into yellow, snake-like fangs. White, patchy fur sprouted from his hands and arms in bursts, and as he moved his head around agitatedly, bat-like wings ripped through his suit and stretched out across the room, measuring six feet long on each side of his body. Finally, when he looked to the ceiling, his nose flattened into a disgusting snout.

  Tobin stared at the bat-creature in front of him. It was gazing at the ceiling, panting and growling, until suddenly it snapped its head down and looked at him. Its eyes turned yellow.

  “Boo,” it said.

  Tobin backed away, panicking and swinging his fists. But Jonathan dodged every swipe. Taking a coiled whip from his belt, the bat-creature then snapped it at Tobin, wrapping it around the boy’s legs. When Jonathan pulled on the whip, Tobin fell, crashing awkwardly against a chair before hitting the ground.

  Jonathan pounced, landing on top of Tobin and pinning him to the cold floor with his hind legs. Laughing and growling, he slashed at Tobin’s chest over and over, tearing at his shirt with his long, clawed fingers. The boy screamed, the pain unbearable, like his skin was being lanced with a fiery knife.

  Finally, Jonathan jumped off, and Tobin looked down. The boy’s chest was now sliced open and bleeding, and there was a white acid sizzling on the wounds. He tried to stand but fell back down again, his limbs sud
denly feeling as if they were not there. As he clutched his chest, all he could feel was the burning. The burning, the burning.

  As Nelson and Miller stood over the fallen boy, Jonathan crouched down and spoke to him.

  “I’m sorry, Tobin, but the bit of pain is necessary. We knew you wouldn’t come quietly, and we couldn’t take our chances with you…acting up. But, in just a few more seconds now, it’ll all be over. Don’t try and fight it.”

  The pale man reached down and grabbed Tobin’s face, forcing the boy to look out a window, pressing his cheek against the glass.

  “Your world out there is on a timetable, Tobin, and one that is not in its favor. Earth has been on this course for decades, centuries, maybe even eons, and now we are finally coming to its end. It’s my job to help that end happen, and—unfortunately for you—that means erasing you, your name, and any trace that you ever existed.

  “You should know that it has to be this way, Tobin. We have no choice. We have to break you.”

  Looking out the window, Tobin suddenly thought of his mother. Somehow, in his mind, he could see her: she was standing on the front porch of their house, waiting for him to come home.

  The boy’s eyes flashed open. They burned bright blue. He had one more moment of clarity.

  Tobin stood up and pushed Jonathan away. Amazingly, stunningly, lightning bolts screamed out from the boy’s hands. The streams of raging, blue-and-white electricity threw Jonathan across the store and he smashed into the cash register, his body contorting around the wooden counter before falling to the floor. As he lay there, unmoving, smoke rose from his body, and little dashes of white electricity jumped across his chest.

  Lightning struck and thunder boomed.

  Nelson and Miller ran to Jonathan, the both of them very afraid.

  “Oh my god, Jon, are you okay?” Miller shouted. “C’mon, man, we gotta get out of here! C’mon! C’mon!”

  After helping Jonathan to his feet, the two goons ran out of the store. Jonathan followed them, with his arms across his ribs, his body still smoking.