Harris grunted as he rolled away, hands reaching out to try to protect himself. Steve cursed while Rachael stumbled backwards on her feet.
Peter let go of my hand and moved to stand guard over Dykovski.
Dykovski didn’t stir, trapped in the armor.
I shook the fogginess out of my head, fighting back a wave of panic.
“Hunter, something’s wrong.” The words came out strong despite my growing fear.
A burst of hot air rolled over us, bringing more dark smoke. I dropped down to my hands and knees, coughing and spitting. The team shifted around me, confused as much as I was.
“I’ve carried five people before. I don’t know what’s going wrong,” I choked out.
“Hold on,” he murmured, the honeyed words soothing raw nerves. “Hold on a second. Jessie, pass that to me.”
A series of pinecones nearby went off like fireworks, the pop-pop-pop adding to the surreal scene.
“It’s the armor,” Hunter called over the link. “Dykovski’s armor is too heavy. It’s not the number of people you’re carrying, it’s the overall weight.”
“But with the jacket I should have more power, right?”
“Even with the jacket and the enhancements, you’d have a tough time if you were well. But you’re not, Jo. You’re not at a hundred percent.” He paused. “I should have kept you here.”
“My life, my decision,” I whispered, the hoarse words clogging my throat.
“So, what, do we leave him behind?” Peter asked, still standing over Dykovski.
“Yes,” Rachael cut in.
I turned and looked at her. She pointed at Dykovski, his terrified face pressed up against the helmet opening as he watched us debate his fate.
“He’d do it to you. He’d do it to any of us in a minute to save his miserable ass.” Her voice rose to a shout, drowning out the crackles and roars around us. “He hurt me, he hurt Jo, and he killed Kit and Linda. He sent those robots to set the fires, create this devastation to kill us and threaten anyone in the area. Let him cook like a lobster in a hot pot.” She spat out the last few words, the saliva landing on the heated armor and evaporating away.
“No.” I shook my head. A blast of scalding air shoved me to one side, drowning me in smoke.
“Why not? No one will know.” Rachael faced me. “No one would care.”
I saw the need in her eyes for revenge. I couldn’t blame her; I had some of it myself. It was a primal urge, tit for tat, and payback was a bitch. Everyone had it, everyone wanted it.
Problem is we weren’t supposed to be just like everyone.
“We could leave him here.” She turned to the rest of the team. “We’d be the only ones who would know,” she pleaded.
“But we’d know,” Steve said, his gravelly voice even deeper with the smoke. “We’d know.” He studied Harris, who shook his head in response, his eyes still closed.
Peter stepped next to Rachael and took her hand. “I know you’re upset, but we can’t do this.” He pointed at the sky. “It’s our time to fly, not crash and burn.”
Rachael bit down on her lower lip, eyes downcast.
Peter leaned in to whisper in her ear.
A wisp of a smile appeared, and she nodded her agreement.
“Is there any way to crack this thing open?” I kicked Dykovski’s leg. “Get to the juicy fleshy center.”
Steve knelt and gave a tug at one of the arms, thick fingers probing into the small crack. “It’ll be like stripping a car for parts. Bit by bit, it’ll take me a good hour to get it all off or most of it. I’ve only got one good hand.” By way of demonstration he pulled the left forearm bracer free, holding up the six-inch-long piece of metal. “Don’t think we got the time.”
“Leave me behind,” Harris rasped. “I’m blind and useless to you guys now. Maybe it’ll be enough for you to lift him.”
“You’re not that fat. No way you’ll offset that metal suit.” I walked over and patted his bulging belly. “Besides, you’re one of us. No one gets left behind.”
“Jo, what do you want to do?” Hunter asked. “I don’t mean to press, but you’re running out of time.” The honey was gone, replaced with a jittery, caffeine-fueled tone.
The thick smoke swirled about us. I looked down at the trapped man, staring at him through the transparent faceplate.
Dykovski looked stoic, neutrally observing me. Waiting for me to make a decision.
Waiting for me to save his world.
“We’re getting out of here. All of us.” The words were tight in my throat. “All of us,” I repeated. “I’ll give you the speech about being better than he is later. Now let’s just get the hell out of here.”
“I think you just did.” Peter coughed, nudging Dykovski with his foot.
“Hush.” I closed my eyes, shutting out the outside world. The electromagnetic waves appeared, pouring off everything, including the burning wood. It turned into a wild kaleidoscope of neon colors as I reached out with my mind.
It wouldn’t be enough to do the usual. I needed the unusual, the unfocused power I’d been taught to stem for so long.
“Hunter, give me a direction to get out of here.” I sucked up the waves, twisting them into a complex pattern. “Rachael, I need you up here beside me to play Seeing-Eye dog. Peter, lead Harris. Steve, drag that bastard, and I don’t care if you hit a few rocks along the way.”
I heard the team shuffle around me, trusting my commands. The acrid smoke choked my words. “Get in tight. It’s going to be a rough time.”
“Head to your north. That’s straight ahead of you. You’ve got homing pigeon genes,” Hunter snapped. “Straight line. Get moving.”
“Right.” I held out my hands in front of me. “Rachael, you’re in charge of keeping us all supplied with fresh air. Don’t bring up too much from the ground, don’t feed the fire. But we can’t suffocate before we get out of here.”
“What are you going to do?” Steve asked. I heard the scrape of metal on metal.
“Blast us a path out of here. You protect us from falling trees and the like. I have to concentrate, and that means I can’t do anything else other than focus. Rachael, take my arm. I’ll be looking but not seeing, if you get my drift. Don’t let me fall.”
Her fingers tightened on my forearm as we stepped forward. At the edge of the clearing the heat blasted my face, tearing at my flesh.
My pulse hammered in my ears, almost drowning out my words. “Right. Let’s get going.”
I opened my eyes.
The forest shimmered in front of me, the smoke and haze mixing with the electromagnetic waves blasting out in all directions. I’d tried so hard over all these years to keep the two divided, to pull them apart and keep a sharp focus on what was real to the touch.
I needed to keep that barrier down, let all of my hard-earned control go while I diverted my energy to shooting out a force blast.
It’d either work, or we’d die within a few minutes.
“Hunter, send me some luck,” I murmured.
Flames crept up the nearby trees, sparks flying out as small explosions went off in the branches and showered us with debris. Something landed on my right shoulder, followed almost immediately by a hard slap.
“Burning twig,” Steve called out.
Rachael pointed her free hand downward. A light breeze puffed up, fresher air than what we were inhaling but still dense with smoke.
I lifted my right hand and pointed it at the raging flames, narrowing my focus to the ground before us. The soil we needed to get across and closer to our freedom.
“Now or never,” I whispered.
I released a blast of energy, spiraling it out into a wide cone.
The shot rolled through a thirty feet block straight ahead, putting the flames out as if I’d blown out a match. I staggered forward, leading the team onward.
“What are you doing?” Peter whispered as we stepped over the incinerated terrain.
“Don’t talk. Do,”
Hunter broke in. “What she’s doing is charging up the soot in the air and then using them to destabilize the fires.”
Harris grunted behind me. “It’s all magic to me, but if it works, you go, girl.”
I stopped at the edge of the thin passage, readying another shot. The headache blossomed into a migraine, narrowing my vision into a tunnel of fire and smoke shattered by vivid colors across the spectrum.
I fired again. The invisible window opened for us to scramble through, the fire reclaiming the vacant ground seconds after we left. The roaring monster crept at our heels, nipping and licking at the power armor as Steve dragged Dykovski over the charred surface.
Every foot seemed like a mile, every minute an hour. I’d shoot away the flames, Rachael would suck up as much fresh air from the ground as she dared to without feeding the fire and we’d charge as far forward as we could.
Rinse and repeat.
Rinse and repeat.
Rinse and repeat.
“Another few minutes, Jo. Just another few minutes,” Hunter repeated for the tenth time as we moved forward again.
A thunderclap split the air over us, drowning out the roar of the fire.
“Rain would be nice,” Peter said.
“From your lips to God’s ears,” I whispered, punching another hole in the fire. My head was throbbing, the pain running down the back of my neck and into my belly, the nausea almost overwhelming me. I tasted something coppery inside my mouth and resisted the urge to spit, afraid of what I’d see.
“We’ve got storms moving in,” Hunter said. “Maybe in the next hour, if the forecast is right. Forest Service is happy about that, believe me.”
“Not going to help us right now,” I wheezed. “Rachael, can I get another puff?”
The smoke around us grew a fraction lighter, the forced air rushing up to our weary lungs. It felt like I was underwater, trying to catch my breath.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t risk much more than that. I don’t want to undo all your work.”
“It’s enough.” We staggered onward through the inferno. “It’s enough.”
“I’m sorry, Jo,” she apologized.
“Don’t sweat it.” I choked on a giggle.
My feet dragged through the superheated soil, the bottoms of my shoes threatening to melt and keep me here forever.
A hissing came from somewhere in front of us, as if a giant angry snake had risen from an unseen pit.
“Water drop not far from your position,” Hunter said. “Best they can do for you. Can’t drop it right on top of you, it’s too dangerous. Knock you right over or worse.”
I felt the cooling breeze for a fraction of a second, washing over me like a remembered dream before it vanished in the next level of Dante’s Hell. “Thanks.”
A cramp erupted on my right calf, the stabbing pain shooting up into my spine. I crumpled, saved at the last second by Rachael’s iron grip on my waist.
She pulled me upright and forced me forward, taking most of my weight. We hopped along like a pair of drunken bridesmaids on the way back to the hotel.
“Just a little farther,” she repeated. “Come on, Jo. I want to get back to Vegas. Need to go clubbing again. Maybe you and Hunter can come along, hang with me and Peter. We can flirt with the dancers until Peter steals one away. It’ll be the funkiest double date ever.”
“Us old folks need our rest.” I twisted the waves together for what seemed like the thousandth time. “Maybe if we…”
The blast left my hand, along with the last of my strength.
I was finished, mentally and physically.
I slipped out of Rachael’s grip and sank down, the heat rising to wrap itself around me in a suffocating embrace.
Chapter Seventeen
A roaring spun around me. I could pick out a few voices—Peter, Rachael and Hunter screaming over the link—but other voices interfered, static on the line and in my mind.
Something hit my face, forcing my eyes open.
“Jo? Jo?” Hunter came into focus, his dark brown eyes inches from my own. “Breathe, love. Breathe.”
I looked down at the oxygen mask he clasped to my face. Fresh air blasted its way into my tortured lungs. The light green plastic was cool to the touch, pressing against my heated skin to the point of pain.
“What happened?” That was what I tried to say, but instead I babbled something like, “Whahepp?”
“A firefighting team pushed through to meet you. I came along for the ride.” He pulled me upright, letting my head rest on his chest. “Everyone’s fine, but we’ve got to get out of here.”
He wasn’t wearing his leather jacket, and his white T-shirt wasn’t white anymore, stained black and brown with dirt and soot. I pulled the mask away in time to cough, the spasms rocking me down to the core.
“I think…”
“Less talk, more walk. Breathe.” Hunter began to walk, dragging me beside him.
I took another deep swallow of the oxygen, noticing the plastic tube led back to a small tank slung over Hunter’s back. The coarse fabric strap dug into his chest, scraping along sweaty blotches of his shirt.
“You need this.” I reached up to pull the mask off.
“Like hell I do,” he shouted as he slapped my hand away. “Damn it, I’ll tie your hands and toss you over my shoulder if you try that again.”
“Always with the kink,” I whispered as I sucked on the clean air.
He chuckled. “Always such a damned tease.” His tone softened. “I’ll be fine.”
Around us a series of bulldozers and other machinery ground and whined as they went to work, digging through the scorched earth to form a firebreak. I spotted Dykovski, still trapped in his armor, being dragged by three men plus Steve. Ahead of us Harris rode on a stretcher carried by a pair of paramedics, Rachael holding on to his hand as the medical team hustled them through the crowd of firefighters moving past us in the opposite direction.
Peter popped up beside me, carrying his own small green tank of oxygen. “We’re good, Jo. We’re all good.” He patted my shoulder. “We’re all good.”
I looked at him, my eyes aching and itching. My mind was a huge ball of dryer lint, so I nodded.
Hunter shuffled me along. “The main camp is just ahead. We’ve got the bus there, and we can get Harris out via ambulance.”
“How bad?” I croaked.
“We don’t know. Could be a flash burn, from what I saw. Might not be too serious once they clean him up.” He gave me a shake, seeing my expression. “Don’t think the worst until we get the official word, ’kay? Give him a chance.” A boyish smile broke free. “Maybe it’s his turn to get lucky.”
My right foot skipped along the ground by the toe, dragging a trench in the soil. It was too heavy to pick up. The air became less dense, the roaring behind us diminishing with every step.
We moved into an area untouched by the fire, the smoke now only a faint memory.
I finally found the strength to focus in on the man half-walking, half-carrying me. “Lord, Hunter. You look awful.” I took another shot of oxygen, trying to offset the pain from saying just a handful of words.
Dried blood coated his upper lip and there was a large bruise coming up on his chin. The soot on his face looked like medieval war paint, and I could have sworn I saw a tear in the corner of one eye.
“You haven’t seen yourself in a mirror lately.” He laughed and shook his head. “We make quite the pair.”
The crowd burst apart around us, and I spotted the large black bus by the side of the road. Bill sat behind the wheel with a newspaper in his hands as if he were waiting for a bunch of seniors to wander out of the casino after the lunch buffet.
Jessie bolted down the steps of the bus and charged at us. “Are you okay? Is she okay? Is everyone okay?”
Hunter held up a hand, stopping him before impact. “She’s fine. We’re fine. Everyone’s okay.” He glanced at the medical team carrying Harris. “More or less.”
/> “I’ll tell David.” Jessie smiled as he skidded to a stop. “He’s been tearing my ear off.”
“I’ll call him back in a bit,” I offered, knowing the bookstore owner wouldn’t be put off for long. “Make sure you point out I’m okay.”
“Sure.” Jessie headed for the bus, relief showing on his face.
“Here.” Hunter gestured towards one of the three ambulances sitting nearby. “Let’s get you checked out.” He paused. “Again.”
“Smartass,” I rasped as I pulled off the oxygen mask.
I sat on the bumper of the ambulance and let Hunter strip off my jacket, the overheated leather smoking in spots. My white T-shirt was soaked through with sweat, offering anyone who was interested a good view of my sports bra.
The female paramedic moved in with the blood pressure cuff and the thermometer. One went around my arm, the other in my ear. I wasn’t sure which went where, my attention on the group of rescue workers trotting by carrying what looked like some sort of obscene torture weapon.
“Wassat?” I waved a hand at the firemen.
“They’re going to use the Jaws of Life to pry Dykovski out of the armor.” Hunter brushed some grey ash from my jacket as he put it over his arm. “Without the power cell it’s a dead weight. And we sure as hell ain’t going to give him a new battery to get him out.”
I spotted the Agency men on the other side of the bus, the black SUVs lined up in a row like their human counterparts. “Where’s Outrager?”
“Around here somewhere.” Hunter rubbed his bruised chin, sounding rather pleased with himself. “I believe he’s trying to stay off our radar. Don’t know why.”
I glared at him as the paramedic struggled to keep me still long enough to get a reading. “What happened?”
“Stop moving and I’ll tell you.” He nodded at the woman who jumped at the chance to get her numbers. “Outrager ‘forgot’ to tell us about the robots in the cache. He wasn’t that worried about Dykovski having access to them since the armament wasn’t heavy, just the lasers, and he knew we could handle that easily enough. A nice warm-up exercise for the Protectors in his warped Agency mind.”
Heroes Lost and Found Page 24