by Alan Janney
“Fine,” she growled. She shoved a pistol into my belt. “Just in case.”
I jogged up the final stairs to the penthouse, peering first around each turn in the stairwell. “The door isn’t locked,” I reported quietly. Neither Puck nor Samantha answered. I stepped onto the wind-swept tenth-story roof. This was the top of the hospital’s new tower. Below, surrounding the tower, was the structure’s older wings, each five stories tall. “Can’t see much. No lights up here?” I whispered, squinting into the darkness. The only illumination came from the surrounding city. “How long before power comes back?”
No answer. I checked the phone. The call was disconnected.
“Great,” I sighed.
“Yo Outlaw! Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Walter’s voice drifted across the rooftop. “Or I’m putting a bullet in this guy’s ear.”
Walter. That guy’s the worst.
A loud pop and the outdoor lights snapped on. Walter was across the helipad, at the far corner of the roof with the other two. He stood between the Infected kid and the woozy patient. Walter and the Infected kid were harnessed in with ropes so they could rappel quickly down the face of the hospital. The patient was swaying next to them. Walter had a gun pointed at the patient’s head.
“Oh my gosh,” the Infected boy beside Walter said. “It really is the Outlaw.”
I kept thinking of him as a kid, but he was my age, maybe a little younger. And he was Infected, which meant dangerous.
“How’s your head, kid?” I asked him. A heavy steel ball was bouncing in my hand. “Still getting the headaches?”
“Yes sir,” he squeaked.
“Awful, huh? Mine just stopped.”
“Hurts right now,” he nodded. He had short hair and a babyface. “A lot.”
“Shut up. Don’t talk to him,” Walter growled. Walter was wearing a vest, like me. His arms were better than mine.
“Don’t listen to Walter. I want you to come with me,” I said. The boy’s eyes got bigger. “I can show you how to survive. You don’t need them.”
Walter said, “Outlaw, the patient’s either dying or coming with us.” He thumbed the pistol’s hammer back. “You pick.”
“Walter, this is ridiculous. What are you doing?”
“Harvesting. And running short on patience.”
“You can’t have him,” I said simply. “He’s a human, he counts, his life matters. You’ll have to kill me first, and I don’t think you can.”
“We’ll see.”
“You,” I said, pointing at the Infected babyfaced kid. “You stay with me too. Walter and the Chemist, they think this a game, or, even worse, a war. But it’s not. This is your life. You only get one, and they want to waste it.”
“The Father gave me a home,” the boy said.
“The Father?” I scoffed. I had closed half the distance between us. “Oh jeez. You have to call him Father?”
“He gave me a family.”
“Kid, go,” Walter growled, indicating the thick rope in his hands.
“He didn’t give you anything,” I said. “The Chemist is using you. He will use you up, and then he’ll dispose of you.”
“Go now,” Walter barked and he shoved the boy. The kid tipped back over the ledge, tightened his grip on the rope, and rappelled out of sight. Gone.
“Walter,” I sighed. “Put the gun away. Let me help the patient.”
“You?? Chemist has the most success at keeping new Chosen alive,” Walter chuckled. “He saves their brain. You can’t do that.”
“He might save their brain, but he throws their body into his fire,” I said. “Why are you helping that madman?”
The patient, wearing a hospital gown, groaned. He was going to fall, any second. I was close.
“The Chemist is going to rule the world soon,” Walter shouted. “Guaranteed. You're on the wrong side. And I can’t let you have more soldiers. You going back downstairs?”
“I am not.”
“I know you’re fast. Fought you before. Saw you dodge bullets. You beat me in the Compton knife fight. So I got no reason to wanna fight tonight.”
“Good.”
“His blood is on your hands.” He sniffed. He lowered the gun to the guy’s chest and pulled the trigger. The gun went off, and the patient rocked backwards with a scream.
“NO!” I cried.
“See you soon, hero.” He disappeared over the lip of the parapet.
The patient staggered sideways, clutching his chest. I got there in time to miss his sleeve. He fell over the adjoining edge, away from Walter. The parking lot was ten stories below, a dizzying distance. I jumped without thinking.
Not a great plan! I caught his flailing body after three stories. We plummeted, disoriented, and the wind scraped us painfully against the tower flying upwards. I reached for the parachute in the rear of the vest.
Can’t find the clasp!
The Hollywood Presbyterian Medical tower has a wide base, beginning at the fourth floor. We smashed into the base at over forty miles per hour. I never had time to panic. The roof partially caved, bursting a pipe that spewed hot water over the edge. We came to rest in a small roof crater.
He was dead. I knew without checking. The virus makes our brains tender; plus he recently had an aneurysm, got shot in the chest, and just fell six stories. No chance. My body was healthier and harder, and my broken bones would heal within a few hours. But I doubted I had any, other than maybe a few ribs.
I stared at the sky, holding the kid in my arms. Walter shot him in the chest instead of the head, forcing me to attempt a rescue. Bought him time to escape. It worked. All four of the hostile Infected would return safely to Compton. Walter was good at his job. He was willing to sacrifice. I wasn’t. He was a zealot for his cause. I didn’t even know what his cause was. Nor mine. Nothing made sense. Everything hurt. The kid’s body was still hot and I wanted to cry.
My headset rang.
I answered it and grunted. Sirens were getting closer.
“Outlaw! Where are you?” Puck asked.
“I’m sad, Puck. Really sad.”
“What?”
“Walter shot the kid. And then got away,” I reported.
Heavy silence.
“Samantha, you there?”
“Yes, Chase,” she said.
“Get our vehicles out of the parking lot. Police are out front, I think. I’ll meet you wherever. I need another minute.”
* * *
Samantha and I returned home at 5:30am, before the sun came up. We each ate an entire box of cereal, and then split a bowl of fruit and three chocolate bars. We didn’t speak for a long time. The house was silent, except for the distant noises of dad getting ready.
“Chase, I know this feels like we lost,” she said eventually. “But we didn’t. We kept the Chemist from getting another super soldier.”
“He wasn’t just a body to tip the scale in our favor or in the Chemist’s favor,” I said. My eyes were closed and my forehead was resting in the palm of my hand, elbow propped on the table. “That was a person.”
“I know.”
“He has parents. Had parents. Maybe siblings. He never got the chance to meet people like him, to have things explained to him.”
“I know. But,” she consoled me, “don’t forget. The virus was going to kill him anyway, most likely. It almost always does. At least we tried.”
“Walter said the Chemist would keep him alive,” I said. I was numb, just thinking out loud. “Should we have let Walter take the guy? Walter gave me the choice, for the kid to live with them, or for the kid to die. What if the Chemist really can save all their minds from insanity?”
“The Chemist puts those kids in comas, wakes them up, brainwashes them, and then forces them to do terrible things,” Samantha said. She stood from her chair, stretched, and laid down spread-eagle on the living room carpet near the couch. “That cannot be an option we consider acceptable.”
“Do you get depressed after
action?”
“Yes,” she said, and she blew a mouthful of air at the ceiling. “An ocean of adrenaline is filtering out of our system. It’s normal. Plus, I usually have to pee a lot.”
“Tell me about the witch,” I said.
“The what?”
“That girl. The hot one,” I reminded her. “Blonde hair, blue eyes. She used magic on me, or something. Right?”
“No,” she chuckled. “You’re just a dumb boy who does whatever pretty girls tell him to do.”
“That’s not true! She…like…mind-controlled me.”
“Carter warned me about the girl with blue eyes.”
“What’d he say?”
“Said a few decades ago there was an Infected girl in Europe who could make people do whatever she wanted. Her charms mostly worked on men. Carter spotted the blue-eyed girl in Compton, and guessed she had similar abilities.”
“What do you mean, her charms?”
“The disease heightens our natural assets. Right? For Puck, that’s his mind. For you, it’s your speed and strength. For her, it’s her beauty. The disease blessed her with better hair, a better figure, seductive voice, you get the idea. But. I think her real secret is that she produces pheromones. Normal bodies don’t do that.”
“Pheromones. Like…mating pheromones?” That made a lot of sense. I felt like the girl had assaulted my entire sensorium by just saying ‘Please.’
“Yes. Mating pheromones. That’s Carter’s theory. You saw her, you heard her, you smelled her, you sensed her, and so you wanted to mate with her.”
“Stop smiling.”
“I’m not!” But her face was contorted with suppressed laughter.
“You are too,” I scowled. “It’s not my fault.”
“I didn’t say it was! Science proves guys are idiots around a hot girl. And Blue Eyes is a hundred times more attractive than normal. You fell in love with her instantly.” She was still smiling.
“Not just me. Everyone in that hallway did. So…shut up.”
“Outlaw and Blue Eyes. Sitting in a tree. K-i-s-s-i-n-g,” she sang.
“Mooooving on. I noticed she had locomotion trouble. She ran with a weird limp. Most Inflected move like the wind, but not her.”
“Happens a lot. Infected have enlarged bones sometimes, like Carter’s fingers. I bet Blue Eyes has a misshapen pelvis.”
“Gross.”
She shrugged.
I said, “I knocked her unconscious. Then you knocked Carla unconscious. It wasn’t hard. Shouldn’t the disease have given them reinforced skulls or something?”
She tapped her head and said, “Tender brains, remember? All newbies have them. Except maybe Tank.”
Dad walked in. He was wearing work khakis and a dark blue polo. A pistol and badge were clipped to his belt. He looked fit and alert.
“You two are up early.”
Samantha sat up and said, “Good morning, Richard.”
I said, “Richard? Don’t call him Richard.”
“We went for a run. Chase is getting fat.”
Dad frowned at me. “What happened to you, kiddo?”
“What? Oh,” I said, looking down at my destroyed vest. I should have removed it. Hopefully Dad wouldn’t notice it was a ruined version of the Outlaw’s costume. “It was…I…fell.”
“Looks like you got shot, ran over, and then fell,” he grunted, his hands on his hips.
“Hah! Good one, Dad. But I’m not getting fat.”
Samantha said, “You look sharp, Richard. First day back on the job?”
“Yep,” he nodded and went into the kitchen for coffee. “Received the assignment yesterday.”
“What assignment?” I asked.
“We call it the SAT assignment.”
“Which means?”
“It’s a nickname. Stands for Superhuman Apprehension Team. We can’t use it officially, for obvious reasons. Supervisors hate it. It’s the joint task force charged with investigating and apprehending the Chemist and Outlaw terror groups.”
“Hah!” Samantha hooted from the living room. “You’ll be great at that!” She started laughing hysterically.
“The Outlaw’s not a terrorist!” I cried.
Dad looked curiously in her direction. “Since when do you defend the Outlaw?” he asked me, pouring his Keurig coffee into a to-go cup. “Thought you hated the guy.”
Samantha’s volume increased. “Chase hates the Outlaw??” I considered filling her open mouth with a couch cushion.
“I have to run,” Dad said, grabbing his stuff. “Hollywood police just radioed. The Outlaw was sighted in a hospital shootout.”
Samantha and I blinked innocently. “………oh?”
“First sighting in months. Maybe he’s not dead after all.”
Samantha was leaning back on her hands and smiling, “Is there video?”
“Don’t know. But it’ll be all over the news soon.”
“So your job is to catch the Outlaw?” I asked, my head about to explode.
“You could say that. I need to go. Have a good one.” He threw me a casual salute, then said, “Samantha, I want your parents to call me. Soon. Got it?” he pointed at her. “Otherwise you and I are going to have a long conversation.”
“Have a good day, Richard,” she called as he marched out and slammed the door.
“Stop,” I glared at her, “calling him Richard!”
“What?? That’s his name! This is SO much fun.”
* * *
I lay in bed that night, missing Katie. I hadn’t heard from her in days. Earlier that day I wrote her a card, put it in an envelope, and dropped it in her mailbox. It said, ‘I love you. For many reasons. One reason is you're the only girl I know who helps her mother garden. You two make your building look very pretty. And you look SUPER hot in your pink gardening tank top.’
She hadn’t replied. It wasn’t a good letter. Maybe she was mad. I didn’t know how to be romantic. I didn’t know how to do anything well, it felt.
I picked up my phone and texted Puck.
Did you hear what Carla said to me last night? After she shot me?
>>no what?
I don’t remember either. My head was ringing. But I remember she wanted peace between us.
>>girl shot u and then asked 4 peace??
Something like that.
>>crazy b!tc#
I think Carla doesn’t enjoy violence. Just like me. She’s rebelling against the Chemist.
>>but didnt she try 2 stab u in compton?
Yeah. She has issues. But there might be hope for her.
>>if u say so
I put the phone down.
My ruined vest lay at the foot of my bed. The ballistic plates were crunched, the zipper was jammed, and the fabric was torn beyond repair. I needed to contact Lee for a new vest.
I needed to stop getting shot.
I might be safer in jail. Maybe I’d get lucky and Dad would arrest me.
Chapter Five
Thursday, August 13. 2018
The hospital shootout was big news, primarily because of the Outlaw. Puck deleted all the security video, but two Hollywood traffic cameras took pictures of the Outlaw on his motorcycle; Puck didn’t notice them until it was too late. The Return of the Outlaw led nightly newscasts for several days, and the Outlaw fan club (the Outlawyers) were whipped into a social media frenzy. Further fanning the flames was the second appearance of the mysterious girl. Helicopters had taken grainy video of Samantha Gear back in March, and now witnesses were describing her again. Was the Outlaw building a team of Hyper Sapiens??
“Ridiculous,” Samantha sneered, scrolling through news on her tablet. “I’m referred to as the Outlaw’s Sidekick!”
“Well, if the shoe fits…”
“The shoe doesn’t fit, Chase,” she growled. “I will stuff the shoe down your throat.” Carter was back in town and he chewed Samantha out for letting the kid die. She’d been furious and devastated for two days afterwards.
> But who had the Outlaw and his sidekick been fighting?? That was the question. Hospital workers and police sketch artists produced renderings of Blue Eyes, Walter, and Carla, none of which were very accurate. Nobody in the building remembered the babyfaced Infected kid. Nobody except me. An internet news article referred to the hostile Infected group as the ‘Trio of Terrorists’ and everyone copied it.
Marshaling all available facts, the media constructed a possible narrative for the shootout; the Trio of Terrorists went to the hospital to bust out their comrade (the patient, who had been seen flipping vehicles earlier that night) but they were foiled by the Outlaw and his sidekick, and during the melee the patient had been shot and fallen off the roof. This narrative wasn’t far from the truth, actually.
PuckDaddy entered the nation’s collective conversation again. Police cyber-op teams blamed the lack of security footage on a powerful hacker, probably PuckDaddy. He’d been accused of helping the Outlaw previously.
All in all, we made a thorough mess. The only positive outcome of the hospital fiasco was that Dad seemed renewed and reengaged with the world. He spent hours questioning witnesses, examining photos from various cameras, talking with ballistic experts, and inspecting the scene of the gun battle. (Fortunately I’d changed the color of my bike and altered the license plate. Otherwise he would have already busted me.) He worked closely with the FBI, and once at the dinner table he even mentioned my old pal Special Agent Isaac Anderson.
School started in less than two weeks. Samantha and I had football practice each morning, during which we wrestled against the disease’s urges to run faster, throw farther, kick higher, and hit harder than humanly possible. Football practices no longer presented any physical challenges, but they exhausted us mentally. After lunch I attended sessions at a quarterback camp. The camp was invitation only, and all the players were cocky alpha males, suspicious and judgmental, not wholly unlike Infected.
At night, Cory and I helped Lee experiment with parachute designs by jumping off his roof. The chutes were small and we landed hard in his pool. Sometimes they didn’t even open at all. Lee was an inventor, so we were accustomed to his goofy trials. He never mentioned the fact he was designing the parachutes for the Outlaw’s new vest. Samantha visited one night to jump in the pool but she refused the parachute.