Dean had his face toward his desktop, his eyes closed, and his lips tightly mashed together. His shoulders jiggled up and down. “Nothing,” he managed to squeak out.
“It certainly doesn’t look like nothing. Whatever it is that has you in such a state, please share it with the class,” Ritzman said.
“It’s just a joke,” Dean said.
“I insist,” Ritzman said.
The invitation calmed Dean enough to regain composure. “Okay, what did the mermaid math teacher wear to school?” He paused and looked around. No one gave it a shot, so he said, “An algae-bra!”
Dean’s laughter suppressed the random groan or two.
“Do you feel better now, Mr. Setters? Is your mind free to receive elements of instruction?” Ritzman asked.
Dean gave a little wave and nodded, returning his gaze to his desktop.
Cole went back to writing on the board. Somehow he didn’t think it was the joke that had Dean so unsettled. Dean was a strange but predictable kid. He certainly would benefit with more discipline in his life and wondered what would happen if he’d join the military along with Kirk.
Fumbling his marker, it fell from his fingers and landed on the floor. As Cole stepped over to retrieve it, he accidentally kicked it over by Mr. Ritzman’s desk.
Some of the kids laughed, and Cole froze for a moment on center stage with the spotlight shining brightly on him. His thoughts scattered.
As Mr. Ritzman sat in his chair, the marker was within his reach. Taking his left hand from his jacket, he leaned over and picked up the marker, raising it for Cole to take.
The long sleeve of Ritzman’s shirt went halfway up his hand, with the maker snug in his grip.
Cole reached out and took the marker, and when Ritzman released it, he saw the fingers on his teacher’s left hand for the first time. The index, middle, and ring finger were fused together with some sort of membrane between them.
The hand went back into Ritzman’s pocket.
Cole stood with his arm still outreached and marker in hand. His gaze darted to Mr. Ritzman’s. Did Ritzman know he saw the deformity? Why did he look Ritzman in the eye? He should have just taken the marker and then gone back to work! But no, he gave himself away, or did he?
“Thank you,” Cole said softly, still unable to tear his gaze away from Ritzman’s.
The teacher’s bad left eye then went into action. With owl-like movement, the left iris drifted over to the corner of his eye socket, while the right iris stayed stationary. It was creepy as all get-out.
Brrraaappappapp!
The undeniable thunder of a trouser cough, no doubt unleashed from the bowels of a giant gorged on two bushels of sauerkraut, erupted from the back of the room.
All gazes shifted from the awkward exchange in front to an area with bookshelves and cabinets.
Amongst the multitude of laughter, Dean Setters brayed like a mule.
“Who did that?” Ritzman was on his feet and leaning over the desk.
“It came from the back of the room,” someone said.
“Maybe it came over the intercom,” someone else said.
The intercom speaker was above Cole’s head, so that couldn’t have been it.
Mr. Ritzman narrowed his eyes Dean’s way. “Mr. Setters?” It was obvious the way he called Dean’s name in question that he had already deduced the culprit.
Dean’s face shined brighter than Rudolph’s nose ever hoped. “What? Why are you picking on me? I’m sitting right here, not in the back of the room.”
“Yes, but I can read you easier than a poker player with two-faced playing cards. Anytime there are shenanigans about, you’re smack dab in the middle of it. You’re responsible for this in some way,” Ritzman said.
After what Dean had said earlier about remote pooting, Mr. Ritzman might be on to something, Cole thought.
“It must be a ghost or maybe a spider,” Dean said.
“Ghosts do not exists, and the discharged certainly did not originate from a spider,” Ritzman said.
“Oh yes, ghosts are real!” Dean said and pointed at Cole. “Cole, go ahead, you know all about ghosts. If ghosts can make noises and talk and stuff, they can fart too, right?”
“I…” Cole sighed deeply and looked about, all gazes were on him, even Ritzman’s. Center stage once again. The day had not been going to plan. First Charlotte and his date, and then Brennon Davis and his threat. Mr. Buddy added to the oddities and his tardiness. Now Dean was throwing him under the bus. How did he manage to dig a hole this deep this early in the day?
*
Though a pleasant breeze blew across the practice field, the bright sun hung in the afternoon sky reminding everyone the scorching summer was soon to come. The junior varsity baseball team was dressed and ready to practice, starting with stretching exercises.
Someone really must have been harassing old man Douglas. Coach Jones had gathered the whole team before they hit the field and warned them to stay away from the old codger’s place. Apparently, Douglas had threatened to shoot anyone he caught vandalizing his farm. Cole wondered if they suspected someone on the baseball team. He could see a blowhard like Brennon, and a couple of his older buddies, causing trouble like that. Still, Douglas might be hiding that they were bigfoot prints.
Old man Douglas must have done something really bad in his past for everyone to be so afraid of him. His dad claimed he didn’t know why the recluse had spent time in jail, but Cole always suspected that he just didn’t want to tell him the sordid details. As far as he could remember, he’d seen Douglas on three occasions. Once at the hardware store when Cole was helping his dad buy fence material, and twice at the county fair, two years in a row. The last two years, as a matter of fact. He never saw Douglas ride any rides or play any games at the fair.
The man mostly meandered around, continually eating the finest cuisine the carnival had to offer. He’d seen him pulling pink cotton candy wrapped tightly around its paper bone. Watched him fold a funnel cake in half and eat mouthfuls at a time; getting powdered sugar all over his nose and beard. He left a trail of peanut shells at one point that even the laziest hunting dog could have followed. Cole did stand next to him one time in the line to buy a fried Snickers bar.
The old man was fairly tall; easily over six feet. He looked like he might have been muscular in his younger days. But his chest looked like it had migrated to his gut. Douglas had worn overalls the times Cole had seen him. His graying beard was thicker than the hair on his head and practically hid his lips. He looked nasty.
The old man caught Cole looking at him while they were in line. Douglas didn’t acknowledge him directly. He just stared back with a plastic Santa Claus smile bloating his cheeks like he was waiting for Cole to ask what he wanted for Christmas. The line moved, and Cole made it a point not to look at him again. There was something creepy about the man, but Cole figured that was something that prison had done to him.
With his left arm reaching down his back and head bent over to the side, Cole continued to stretch. His guardian angel must have been looking out for him earlier. Before he attempted to talk his way from the front of the room during first-hour, the fire alarm went off. He could tell from Mr. Ritzman’s expression that it wasn’t a drill. Everyone filed out in a single line and headed to the nearest door leading outside. It turned out that the alarm had malfunctioned, with only a few minutes to spare before next class after the repair.
Later that day when Dean thought Mr. Ritzman was at lunch, he snuck back into the empty classroom and retrieved his phone. He had managed to hide it in the back in one of the cabinets before class started. Intrigued by the concept of remote pooting, he downloaded a fart app on his phone and set a timer for it to go off. Mr. Ritzman was right there waiting for Dean when he tried to make his escape. The self-proclaimed comedian would be entertaining the detention class after school every day of that week.
Cole had been one of the first dressed and on the field. Brennon Davis, as usual, was one of the last
to leave the locker room. A time or two Cole felt like Superman had his heat vision on and burned the back of his head. He turned only to discover that it was Brennon giving him the evil eye. There was no way Cole could get through practice without the jilted boyfriend extracting revenge.
*
Coach Jones led practice as if just going through the motions without any real fire coming out to inspire his team. It was early in the season and still a couple of weeks away from having their first meaningful game. The kid that went missing from Camden County, Raymond Jones, was his nephew. Coach Jones wasn’t always this lackluster, but Cole wondered if the family situation sometimes had Coach’s mind elsewhere.
There were nine pitchers on the team. Cole was one of five in the 9th grade on the junior varsity team. If you were in the 10th grade and good enough, you could be elevated to the varsity team.
Cole considered himself to be in the middle of the pack in his age group. He had little aspirations to play varsity next year. It really didn’t matter that much. All he wanted to do was at least make the team in his junior or senior year, when competition and a limited roster forced many junior varsity players from playing after the 10th grade. Sure, his fantasy was to play well enough to earn a scholarship to a major university. But first and foremost, he wanted a letterman jacket.
Brennon Davis played in the outfield. Today's practice kept him far enough away that Cole had pretty much forgotten the threat and concentrated on working his throwing mechanics. Don’t throw the ball with your arm! Power position. Turn, pull, snap. Wrist action. Throwing footwork was just as important. You throw the ball with your feet. Shuffle. Shuffle, pull, snap. Feet and wrist.
So far this season Coach Jones had never singled out Cole to comment on his abilities or his progression. Cole knew he was three times better than when practice started that year. If a 9th grader was going to catch his coach’s eye, then he knew he’d have to do something special.
Today’s session neared its end. The coach had the team’s designated batter, Trey Edmunds, up at the plate and each pitcher had one chance to strike him out before heading back to the locker room. The rest of the team had finished their exercises and were heading off the field. Brennon Davis lagged behind, with a curious interest in what was happening at home plate.
Great. It looked like Brennon wasn’t going to let today’s events slide past. Okay, Cole was just going to have to suck it up and not let that guy distract him. The coach was right there to prevent anything from getting out of hand.
Pitchers went up and down fairly quickly. Trey connected with balls no later than the third pitch so far. One hit was a sure home run if it had been in a game. Cole was second to last to take a turn and trotted over to the mound as soon as the previous pitcher vacated.
He took the ball from the coach’s toss and worked it into his glove. Turning to face the batter, he set his feet apart to prepare for the delivery.
“Hey, coach!” Brennon called out.
“What?” Jones yelled back.
“Why don’t you give Trey a break and let me hit?” Brennon said.
Trey looked with a blank expression over at Brennon.
“Come on. I need the practice,” Brennon said.
“Okay. Trey, hit the shower,” Coach Jones said.
Double fudge, Cole thought. That jerk had managed to weasel his way in.
Brennon’s smirk was so wide it deformed the left side of his cheek. He took the bat from Trey and waved it around a few times.
Letting out a big sigh, Cole resolved himself to the situation and got ready to pitch.
Stepping up to the plate, the doofus brought the bat to his shoulder and went through a few slow motion swings.
Cole was center stage again, in a different way. This was a test of his manhood, but he would need some type of miracle to get one past Brennon Davis. Was his guardian angel still around? Oh, Lord above. Help me strike this guy out. Give me the strength I need to win. Cole wasn’t too proud to submit to a higher power. But he had to consciously fight the urge to pray to an eight-pound-eleven-ounce blonde hair blue-eyed infant baby Jesus ever since he had watched The Legend of Ricky Bobby.
It was time. Throw the ball with your arm and feet. Turn and shuffle, pull, snap. Feet and wrist.
The ball left Cole’s hand screaming toward home plate. The fast and furious journey had it on a path straight and true.
Brennon eyed the missile, calculating his options in the nanoseconds between the batter-pitcher showdown.
Alas, the baseball dipped and crashed into the ground two feet in front of the plate and bounced into the catcher’s glove. The bat never left Brennon’s shoulder.
“Calm down, kid,” Coach Jones said. “Breathe, remember to breathe.”
Brennon snickered as he prepared for the next ball. He was in Cole’s head, and he knew it.
Cole tried to pretend he was someone else, in a strange town, pitching to an unknown opponent. He needed to blank out any distractions and concentrate on the mechanics of the game.
The second ball left his hand, in a blur, the cocked bat on Brennon’s shoulder released and cut through the air in front of him. The speeding ball smacked the catcher’s mitt unscathed.
Brennon’s bat had tasted no ball. His lips and nose came together like he had sour fruit on his tongue.
“Good one,” Coach Jones said.
Something inside Cole’s chest swole. Hope was alive, but there were two strikes to go. He went into his windup and delivered the pitch.
Brennon awkwardly swung and barely caught a piece of the ball. Cole could tell the boy had abandoned the batting mechanics and now played with raw emotions. That was strike two. Now, Cole was inside of Brennon’s head.
Cole looked over at Coach Jones and nodded. Whatever swelled inside his chest earlier, just grew again. With the eye of an eagle and the fortitude of a stalking tiger, he gazed down his nose at the challenger at home plate. The ball felt smaller in his hand. At this moment, baseball seemed like a children’s game. A game that he had mastered as evident by the fear in his opponent’s eyes.
It was time. Cole went through the windup and let the ball sail.
The bat catapulted forth, but this was no contest between an unstoppable force meeting with an immovable object. The baseball’s trajectory reversed faster than Cole could blink. It soared back through the air directly at him. His self-preservation sensors took automatic control of his body. In the last instant, he slung himself backward and to the side, twisting to avoid the rocket as it flew just past his nose.
Cole landed on his butt and then his back hit the ground. The open heavens looked down upon him while Brennon Davis hysterically laughed. Cole had not found favor in the Lord’s eye. Apparently, there was a deeper lesson to be learned.
Coach Jones wandered into his field of vision, looking like a giant towering above him. “Feet and wrist, Rainwater. Feet and wrist.”
It was going to be a long baseball season.
Chapter 6
The Future
The seven Nu-Mans trotted down the escape tube toward the two-passenger jumpships, with Tarik bringing up the rear. So far they had suffered only two casualties, Jem, and Trant. The outside team led by Bix had already escaped, following the scientists and civilians committed to the project. The challenge now was for everyone to make it to a safe-house and mingle back into society, free from Skink interrogation. The strike team would resupply and meet in a couple of days. The stopwatch had started counting backward, and there was no way to stop it from reaching zero.
“Pair off and get the hell out of here. The Skinks’ satellites have been watching everything that’s gone down,” Zax said, coming to a stop and standing to the side while everyone else flew past to the awaiting jumpships.
Tarik slowed and stopped by his leader.
Zax waited for his fellow Nu-Mans to board the jumpships. The escape hatches were already open in the above granite leading to blue sky. They would be lucky if the Skinks had
n’t already targeted the area with missiles and getting a few down the throat before they could leave.
“We need to hurry,” Tarik said.
“And we will. Go ahead and get aboard our ship, and I’ll meet you there.”
Tarik didn’t delay. This whole mission rested ultimately on his shoulders. He had to live in order to give the mission a chance. Yes, his life was more important than any of the Nu-Mans, but that was a selfish way to think. Because if the strike team wasn’t intact to some degree, then they could never breach the Skink facility. Zax would have the same sense of loyalty to each of his fellow Nu-Mans as he did to Tarik. That’s why Tarik had such a deep fondness of the Nu-Man.
The jumpships left one by one out of the four escape hatches. Before the fourth ship left, Zax was sitting next to Tarik and strapping in. Fortunately, the jumpships were designed to carry Skinks dressed in their armor.
“You ready?” Tarik asked.
“Yeah, but you better let me drive. I don’t trust you with those metal gloves on.”
Good point, Tarik thought. He had never trained piloting a jumpship while wearing his transmetal armor.
The zero-energy engine kicked in smoothly, lifting the ship up and over until the clear path allowed it to shoot into the air and bank sharply for its designation point.
A few seconds later, a large clap of thunder from behind had the jumpship riding shockwaves. The HUD showed a billowing, dark cloud rising from above the rebel’s nest. Gone, everything from his old way of life vanished in a blast of terrific heat normally felt on the surface of the sun.
“That was close,” Tarik said.
“Too close, and we’re not out of the woods yet. They’ll be able to track us until we touchdown. We’ll take it to the edge of the city and set down. After that, we’ll have to make it to the safe-house on foot.”
“Piece of cake. Sure, we’ll just blend in,” Tarik said, the sarcasm thick enough to be cut with a knife.
*
The jumpship took a jagged route, keeping as close to the ground as possible. The destination, Kansas City, Missouri, was only four hundred kilometers away. It was purely coincidental that the rebel nest and the Skink time jumping facility were located so close together. The nest site had been chosen because of its remoteness from large populated areas, and that had been years ago; long before any word of a time project. The Skinks had taken over a nuclear weapons plant as much of the necessary radioactive shielding was already in place.
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