by Jon Davis
Nathan snapped at Tindal, “I don’t want to just scare them, Danny! I want them dead! Now!”
What came next froze me in place. I found myself unable to breathe as I heard the sound of a gun being cocked. I tensed at the sound. My hand brushed the tarp in front me, and it crackled slightly in the cold air. I froze, hoping that no one had heard it. No such luck.
Nathan yelled, “Hey! They’re over here!”
I looked up and saw Nathan staring at our position. Just enough light from the streetlamps was shining down to allow him to see us. I looked back at him and saw the gun in his hand. Worse, he was weaving in place. He’d been drinking before he had come hunting us. I didn’t waste any time. Jumping to my feet, I whipped a snowball at the guy. Not waiting to see if it hit, I turned and I pushed Brand ahead of me. Together, we leapt over a fence into another yard. I heard more yelling.
Just the same, I said, “Go! Don’t want a bullet in my back, thank you very much!”
Brand yelled, “Wait! Bullet? Well, damn! This just got serious!”
I realized that my super hearing was kicking in again when I heard Nathan muttering about us holding still so he could shoot us. Then I heard his breath catch...he was about to fire. Without thinking, I grabbed Brand and yanked him down into the snow. I yelped in pain as thunder roared in my ears, followed by the sound of a giant bat hitting wood somewhere. But, looking back, I found that I had to laugh when I saw Nathan flying back off the fence. The idiot had fired his gun again while climbing over the fence! I heard Nathan’s friends trying to help him on the other side of the fence. Drunk as they were, it sounded like some Three Stooges movie scene. I decided then and there that there was no way I was going to let those idiots kill me.
Brand grabbed my shoulder. “Come on! Let’s hit the road again!”
As we ran, the pain in my ears started to fade. I didn’t have time to think about what had just happened. Still, my hearing stayed hyped up, and I winced at the sound when my footfalls resounded off the snow-covered ground. Then, in the next second, my hearing went back to normal. I didn’t know why I had this ability, but I wished right then that this super…whatever it was…would make up its mind.
And then, naturally, it came back. I heard something click behind me. Out of sheer reflex, I grabbed Brand and whipped him into an alleyway. Ice and snow crunched under our boots just as another gunshot sounded behind us. I actually heard the bullet whiz past me and into a snowdrift just ahead of us. I grabbed Brand and pulled us around the corner to stop in front of a two-car garage for a second. That was when I heard Brand groan.
I looked and saw that he was clutching at his stomach, bent down, and shivering hard. “Brand? What’s wrong?”
Through the chattering of teeth, he managed to get out the words, “Hot, man, so damn hot…I don’t feel too good.”
I knelt down to get a better look and saw that he looked like hell. He was gaunt and looked ready to collapse. I was cold, too, but for some reason, this run was killing him. I reached out to his back, but pulled away as I felt heat rising from him like crazy. Up close, I could swear that waves of heat were visibly coming off his body.
Before I could do anything more, I heard the roar of Nathan’s Roadster. The sound was echoing off the homes and garages lining the alley. I realized that with Brand just barely standing, I had to keep Nathan’s attention on me. Hearing the Roadster spin its wheels on the icy ground of the alley, I swallowed hard and ran. The headlights spotted me perfectly.
Nathan whooped with triumph when he saw me. I hoped to get to the end and lead them down the street and away from Brand. That, of course, was when my luck ran out. Just as Nathan hit the gas, my feet slipped out from under me and I slid into an old wooden telephone pole.
I shook my head to clear it and scrambled back to my knees. Our eyes met. Nathan sped toward me, rage filling his face. I had time to scream. The world flared to a blinding white light. In a massive burst of pain, pure power ripped out from deep inside me. And the yell I made turned into something that I’d ever heard before in my entire life.
Bit by bit, the pain faded from my head as my vision cleared. I didn’t hear Jessup’s car engine anymore, and I saw why when I looked at the flickering lights. Getting to my feet, I swayed for a moment as a wave of vertigo passed through me.
Hearing a groan, I turned to see that one of the guys from the Roadster was on the ground, lying near my feet. In the glare of the flickering headlights, I’d almost stepped on the poor bastard. His head moved, and he looked up at me with raw fear in his eyes. He twitched a hand toward me, and I flinched back. Deep cuts and heavy bruises covered his head and face, and he was bleeding onto the ground. Blood was quickly darkening what was left of his clothing.
My foot crunched on something. I looked down and saw glass sparkling all over the snow and icy ground. The glass was from the car’s windshield. Somehow, the man had virtually sailed through the windshield. I swallowed down the bile threatening to rush up my throat.
Against my better judgment, I went to get a closer look at the car. When I got past the front, I blinked for a moment, confused. What I saw made no sense. The metal sides of the Roadster had big bends in them from the engine to the back trunk. No, not bends—waves. For a second, I had this image of a half-closed accordion; it looked a little like that, but smoother. Ripples...that was the word. If something could cause damage like this…I realized that I didn’t want to look inside the car. But I had to. Seeing the one man on the ground was bad enough. I had to know about Joe Tindal and Nathan. I realized in the silence that the one I didn’t know was no longer groaning. Whether he was dead or not, I didn’t know.
I could hear nothing coming from the passenger area. Breathing hard, I swallowed back the taste of bile. It took everything I had to push myself to look. Once I did, I wished I hadn’t. Nathan Jessup had crashed forward into the steering wheel. The airbag had deployed, but just the same, I could see his entire jaw line turning purple and dark blue. It looked dislocated. Blood was all over his chest, trailing from both his ears and his mouth. So much blood—he was breathing, but there was so much blood.
When I looked in the back, I lost it. Everything I had eaten that day ended up in bushes on the side of the alley. Tindal hadn’t had his seat belt on. He’d flown forward into the back of the passenger side seat, and his neck had been broken. Blood didn’t flow from his ears, but there was blood everywhere in the backseat. It even soaked his hair. He looked like a tossed around ragdoll. Then I heard the icy ground crunch. I got control of myself and looked up to see Brand staring at me, at the car, trying not to look at what was inside. He looked at me with wide, saucer-like eyes.
He said, “Vaughn, what did you do?”
I whispered, “I don’t know…”
CHAPTER TEN
Another ambulance, another group of police, but this time, beyond the street barriers and crime-scene tape, cameras were recording, lights were flashing, and reporters were sounding frantic as they told the nation about the terrible accident that had taken ‘innocent’ lives in this small town in the American midwest. No, they didn’t know Riverlite.
I heard it all as I sat in the ambulance. I was on a gurney while Jim Houseman checked me out. Looking out the back door, I saw the reporters talking into cameras while newspaper photographers took their pictures. Jim told me that they were the ‘fringe nut’ reporters. They were here to get stories about the growing Avatar movement.
After weeks of relatively boring stories, they wanted something edgier. I had been recognized, and I could hear speculation about a psychotic attack by some fanatic. Nope, sorry reporters, it was only a drunk guy, wanting me dead for what had happened to his brother. But that wasn’t my problem now. No, my problem was how I’d tell people that I’d done this…thing. I didn’t have the words for what I’d done. Not yet.
After putting away a stethoscope, Jim tilted my head up and flashed a penlight in my eyes. I said dumbly, “Nope, not in shock.”
&n
bsp; He looked at me with this expression of utter sympathy and said, “Oh yeah, shock. Sit, your mom’s coming.”
“Vaughn!” I looked up to see my mom coming up to the ambulance. Climbing in, she came up and hugged me. For a moment, we held onto each other. I seriously wished I were the little boy she used to hug when I was growing up. Childhood was a thousand times preferable to what was going on now. I looked past my mom. Outside the ambulance, an EMT was zipping up a body bag.
They were finally able to pull the dead man after the investigators had processed the scene. The one now going into the body bag was the last of the three thugs. Now, only the car sat there, all but mocking me with its rippled look. I swallowed bile and tried to push the sight of it to the back of my mind, if only for a few moments.
My dad ruined the attempt, though, when I saw him coming up to the ambulance, staring over at the car. After Jim got out, Dad climbed in to look at me, his face was full of questions.
I couldn’t begin to answer them, so, to distract him, I asked, “How’s Brand? He looked sick as a dog when he got into the ambulance.”
He gave me a fake smile and said, “He should be fine. He was just affected by the cold and running around. He’s going to stay in the hospital overnight, though, just to be safe.”
Brand had been the first person the EMTs had put into an ambulance when they’d arrived. Someone had finally called the police, and they showed up while Brand and I were still staring at the rippled looking car. To my shock, although Brand had seemed to recover, he fell to the ground as the police and EMTs ran up to us. I realized that it had been adrenaline keeping him upright. When they were looking him over, I saw that Brand looked worse than before Nathan showed up. After they put him in the ambulance and it left, I lost track as more and more people appeared and began sorting things out.
Joe Tindal was dead. But Nathan and the man who went out the front window were still alive and had been quickly taken away. The police kept me behind as a witness to tell them what had happened. Since I only felt tired and not actually hurt, I told them it was okay. I didn’t mind. After all, I was only in a small bit of shock…right, ‘small.’
Now, here, Dad hugged me and asked how I was. After a moment of looking at him, I finally settled on a shrug. What could I say? Dare I say anything? Maybe I had just imagined everything. After all, I really didn’t remember letting loose. No, I couldn't possibly remember a bizarre feeling of forcing the car into resembling something like a rippled potato chip. I didn’t remember one bit of it.
Yes, I did.
Motioning for my parents to back away, I stood and stretched my muscles to get them to relax. I felt achy, like I’d just run a marathon. Looking out, I saw onlookers standing on the sides of the alley. I realized they were the homeowners who hadn’t done a thing to help Brand and me during our panicked run. But now, knowing they were safe, they had come to watch the spectacle in the yellow-white lighting of police car spotlights as well as construction lights used for night work.
How nice that they could see what a single phone call by any one of them could have prevented. Ugh. I was getting mean. This wasn’t their fault. For all anyone had known, we could have been just playing some silly game. I glanced at the scene. No, this was no game. Under the brightness of lights set up by the police, my parents kept looking at me, clearly worried about what had happened. What could I tell them? Nothing…yet. I needed to figure this out first. But I also knew they wanted answers.
So I said, “Mom, he came after us. We were just walking home. But he saw us and it went downhill from there, I—”
My dad interrupted me, “Vaughn, not here, son. The police have to take statements, but not at the moment. Not with reporters right outside.”
He motioned with his head, and I looked over his shoulder to see reporters using boom microphones in an effort to get any part of the story they could. I sighed. Just then, Hector Gutierrez came up to the ambulance. With a gesture, he motioned for my parents to follow him. They nodded and left me alone for a moment.
I just sat there, trying to figure out what had happened with the car. No, I knew what happened with the car. But I didn’t want to believe it. And slowly, I forced myself to accept it. In some way, I had ‘powered up.’ Yeah, that was a good phrase for turning into some sort of superhuman. Crap. I was like Alex. I didn’t know how it had happened, but somehow, I was now able to do things.
Memories of what had happened kept flashing in my mind. After the memorial, I had thought that my weird experience of hearing everything at once had been something to do with my recovery. But now I knew it had been something else altogether. It wasn’t possible, though. It couldn’t be possible. Alex—it had to be from what Alex had done. He had stared at Brand and me, and then he flew—
“Vaughn?” I looked up to see Chief Sinclair standing between my parents. Without waiting for me to react, he climbed into the ambulance and sat on a gurney across from me. I took a calming breath. Could I tell him the truth about what was going on? His flickering glance to the reporters gave me the answer. I couldn’t say anything, not with all the reporters. I did not want to be tomorrow’s new Avatar sighting. So I stayed silent and just looked at him.
In return, Chief Sinclair sighed, but he said nothing, looking at me. I looked down. I was going to have to lie, but I wasn’t sure what I could say. If I told him the truth, what would happen? Would he stick me in a lab or tell the government? The government wouldn’t have to travel far. They were still around, hanging out at Ryan Tech to continue analyzing all the information they had on Alex. No, I didn’t want to see some agent like Dane Eisenhawk again.
Then Chief Sinclair brought me back to the here and now when he said, “So…we appear to have a few oddities here. I’m hoping you can clear them up.”
I told him what happened—the chase, the gunshots, no one helping us. I told him all of it, right up to the moment when Brand collapsed. That’s when I said, “I decided to lead them away from Brand, and thought that if I cut through some yards I could lose them. I…I slipped on the ice and slid down the alley. The next thing I knew, I heard this loud crash. When I turned back to look…”
I swallowed and went silent. That was easier than I’d thought it would be. I just didn’t mention the part where I’d screamed at the car and somehow turned it into a giant ripple potato chip. But the tone of voice from Sinclair made me wince. I’d heard that kind of sound from my dad when he didn’t believe me. Then he said, “Look, Vaughn, I know you’ve been through a lot. But do you know what the car hit to cause that sort of damage?”
I faked a guess, “What about the light pole? I had just passed it when I slipped. Maybe Jessup hit it at high speed.”
He looked at me and shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. To get that sort of damage, Jessup would’ve had to be traveling around sixty miles an hour. But there was no damage to the pole.”
I put on my best poker face and waited for him to continue. He said, “Look, son, I’m not saying you did anything wrong, but this is damn odd. Could it be possible that he hit another wall and just kept driving after you? The damage to the car…”
I shook my head, acting confused by the question. “Honestly, I don’t remember seeing anything like that. Though I think he did sideswipe a few cars.”
Then I looked at him and asked, “How did he get out of jail? Last I heard he hadn’t even gone to court yet.”
Chief Sinclair sighed. Then he said, “He made bail. Someone let him out so he could do interviews. Instead, he went and got drunk and came after you.”
I blinked and said, “He got out today?”
Chief Sinclair said, “Yes, and he just couldn’t wait to get after you two. I suspected he was going to go after you at your homes and sent cars to patrol you neighborhoods. But when he saw both you and Brand at the same time, it was an opportunity that was too good to pass up.”
Reaching over, he squeezed my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Vaughn. It seems that you’ve made enem
ies. Given what happened with Bob Andrews, and with what happened here…”
I sighed. “Oh joy.”
The police chief chuckled, but as he started to say something more, the door opened without warning. Turning his head, Sinclair yelled, “Hey!”
He stopped when Dr. Kular climbed in, looking angry, clear disdain for him on her face. Before he could say anything, she said, “When you start doing your police work on one of my patients, I start getting testy! This boy got out of the hospital only a few weeks ago, and already he’s getting into trouble! Bad enough you have one of your officers trying to question Mr. Houseman at the hospital; you couldn’t even wait to get Hagen there to do it!”
Chief Sinclair stared at the woman for a moment. Then he slowly stood to move out of the space. Once outside, he looked back and said, “Look, doctor, try to understand, we have a serious crime that occurred here. Vaughn isn’t hurt physically.”
Kular was having none of it. “I see. Did you go through medical school before playing at being both a soldier and a police officer? Amazing capabilities you have! Damn it, Sinclair, he’s been overextending himself for months! He threw up in the damn bushes! Houseman told me that!”
I said, “Um, I just had a bad reaction to seeing all the blood.”
She glared at me, and then it was my turn. “Amazing, you have a license to practice medicine, as well? Such amazing people in this town! Have you been taking your medicine, young man? Or are you like Mr. Houseman? He has not been taking his magnesium. So I’m checking you over right now! And, if necessary, we’re going to the hospital!”
The chief looked at her for a moment and then sighed. “All right. I’m sorry. I’ll wait until you’ve checked him out.”
Nodding, Kular closed the ambulance doors and sat down in front of me. Checking me over, she asked how I was feeling. Her voice had a monotone quality to it, making it surprisingly easy to relax. Then, without warning, she grabbed my chin and lifted my head, meeting my eyes. Before I could react to that, I felt like something was pushing at me. I started to pull back only to have Kular tighten her hand along my jaw line.