“It doesn’t matter,” Rachel said. “It wasn’t enough.”
The old woman kept smiling.
“How do you know my name?” Rachel asked.
“We’ve been watching you for quite some time,” Grandma Anna said. “Watching what you’ve been doing every morning.”
Rachel looked at the audience sitting on the pews.
“All these children survived the Black Storm?” she asked.
“Of course they did,” Grandma Anna said. “Let me tell you something Rachel – if anyone was going to survive this hell on earth, it would be the children.”
Rachel’s face took on a puzzled expression.
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” Grandma Anna said. “And I’m afraid, so little time left to do it.”
Rachel took a sip of water. It was freezing cold, like it had ice in it. Then she looked at Grandma Anna and frowned.
“How do you know me?”
“Everybody knows about you,” Grandma Anna said. She spoke in a soft whisper that Rachel could barely hear. “You’re the girl who took on the Black Widow and won. It was the talk of this city during the last days. In such a time of despair, it was the only bright thing we had left. It was precious – it was hope.”
“How did you find out about that?” Rachel asked. “About the Black Widow?”
Grandma Anna looked over her shoulder. There was a serene expression on her face as she gazed at the children sitting on the pews.
“I don’t know how the news got out sweetheart,” she said. “Maybe you and your friends weren’t the only ones in the airport that day. Someone must have seen you I suppose. But word did get out and thank goodness for that. Most people didn’t believe or understand at first. I didn’t understand either – not until I saw for myself.”
“Saw what?” Rachel said.
“The children,” Grandma Anna said. “Until I saw the children.”
Rachel shrugged. She wasn’t following the old woman’s train of thought. “What about them?”
Grandma Anna’s gaze fell to the floor. She nodded slowly, smiling to herself.
“The Black Storm came here to punish mankind,” she said. “Now I don’t know much for sure sweetie but I believe that this storm was intended as a form of justice, not divine justice, but something almost as grand as the Lord. Something bigger than us.”
Grandma Anna pointed a wrinkled finger to the ceiling.
“Something decided we had to go,” she said. “Perhaps they assumed that the world would be better off without humans in it. Can’t blame them I suppose, not after the things we’ve done. The Black Storm was brutal and brilliant in its efficiency. But it wasn’t perfect. You see in all their wisdom, our judge, jury and executioners thought all humankind equally guilty. They either didn’t consider or understand that the children were innocent of whatever crimes they’d decided to punish us for.”
Rachel reached for a biscuit on the tray. She picked one up and took a small bite, all the while listening closely to the woman as she talked.
“The Black Storm came to punish the guilty,” Grandma Anna said. “But the children were innocent. And it’s that innocence that made them immune to the Black Fever. It was easy to miss at the time of course – I should know, it took me long enough to see for myself. When the Black Storm hit San Antonio, I ran as far as I could with my daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. We got in the car and drove off to a safe place. The Black Widow followed us of course.”
“She followed my dad and me too,” Rachel said. “When we ran.”
Grandma Anna’s lips curled into a smile.
“You saw her?” she asked. “The Black Widow spoke to you?”
“Yes,” Rachel said.
“But she couldn’t infect you with the Fever,” Grandma Anna said. “I saw it for myself with my grandchildren. Then I saw it with others too and that’s when I started to notice a pattern. The adults were easily infected when the Black Widow spoke to them but I never saw a child that succumbed to the Fever. Not one. Of course the reason that nobody noticed was that most children died anyway – but they died at the hands of the adults who’d been driven mad, not by the Fever itself.”
Grandma Anna paused. She fidgeted with a loose button on her coat.
“And then there’s you Rachel MacLeod,” she said. “You’re the only one who attacked her. You turned the tables on the Black Widow. Incredible. They say the sky went blue, just for a second. What I wouldn’t give to have been there and to have seen it with my own eyes.”
Rachel took another biscuit off the plate. Her third or fourth. Now that she’d started eating she realized how hungry she was.
“What about the Sliders?” Rachel said, talking in between bites. She could feel the kids gawping at her while she ate and was starting to wish they’d give it a rest. “The Sliders attacked us at the airport. There were lots of children there and they all died.”
“It wasn’t the Sliders that killed those children Rachel,” Grandma Anna said. “It was the adults – their parents, their families who did the terrible deed. Yes it’s a terrible thing and of course you didn’t notice at the time because it was so awful.”
“I stopped the Sliders,” Rachel said, putting a half-eaten biscuit back on the plate. She took a brief sip of water. “I was able to control them. Before the thing at Brackenridge Park, before I took the Exterminators’ power away. I’m not sure how I did it.”
“What were you doing when you charged at the Black Widow in the airport?” Grandma Anna said.
“Helping my Dad.”
“And with the Sliders?”
“The same.”
Grandma Anna nodded. “All children have it in them,” she said. “But you’re the only one I know of that took them on.”
Rachel looked at the lanky boy who’d helped Grandma Anna onto the altar. His hair was short and spiky, his features long and angular.
“How old are you?” Rachel said.
“I’m t-twelve,” he said, sitting up straight on the bench as if he’d been called to attention. “Most people think I’m older b-but I’m just tall for my age.”
Some of the other kids giggled behind him.
“Me too,” Rachel said, looking at the boy. “Well I’m eleven but I’m tall for my age too.”
The boy’s face turned bright red. Even his ears were blushing.
“These things,” Grandma Anna said. “They might be technologically superior. They might be superior to us in every way imaginable. But we know something they don’t. These things…”
“Exterminators,” Rachel said. “We call them Exterminators.”
Grandma Anna’s face lit up. Oddly enough, she seemed to like that.
“These Exterminators,” she said, “they have a weakness. They don’t know that children are immune to their powers of mind trickery. It’s you they want Rachel. They think that it’s something in you – something special about you that they don’t understand. Tell me something child, did you have gifts before the Black Storm? Any sort of psychic gifts?”
Rachel shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Your gift is the natural immunity of a child,” Grandma Anna said. “Your other gift however, was courage. You stood up to the Black Widow in the airport and that was the beginning of your journey. You showed us that tanks and guns and bombs were of no use in this war. It’s the children – the children are the ones who can beat the Exterminators.”
Grandma Anna sat there, giggling quietly.
“And now you are gifted Rachel,” she said. “In a supernatural sense I mean. They tried to steal you from us and instead you stole from them. Like I said, we’ve been watching you for a while. Your mind is incredible. Their power – it runs inside you. That means – it has to mean – that whatever they can do, you can do.”
“How long have you been watching us?” Rachel asked.
“For some time now my dear,” the old woman said. “Of co
urse we meant to introduce ourselves and in fact, we were on the brink of doing so when they came a little earlier than we’d hoped for.”
Rachel looked at the plate of food sitting in front of her.
“What am I supposed to do now?” she said.
“Fight them,” Grandma Anna said. “You’re supposed to fight them Rachel.”
Rachel pushed the plate away. “I already tried fighting them,” she said. “And it’s no good. I can’t win.”
There was a sympathetic smile on the old woman’s face.
“Dear Rachel,” she said. “My poor girl. It’s not fair to put so much pressure on the shoulders of one so young and yet all the pressure is on you. But not just you – you and all the children in this church. You can still be the future if you want to be.”
“How can there be a future anymore?” Rachel said. “Almost everyone’s dead.”
Grandma Anna was about to say something but she was cut off by a loud blast in the distance. It sounded like an explosion or maybe it was another of San Antonio’s finest skyscrapers hitting the ground.
“You need a little more rest,” Grandma Anna said, looking closely at Rachel. “Another hour I’d say.”
“My dad needs me,” Rachel said. She stood up and brushed the crumbs off her coat. Quiet gasps floated across from the benches.
Grandma Anna hobbled over to Rachel. She put a hand on the girl’s shoulder and guided her back down to the sleeping bag.
“Sleep now child,” Grandma Anna said. “An hour – we can spare no more than that. When you wake up we’ll talk some more. Oh my dear girl, there’s so much to talk about tonight. So many secrets still to be revealed.”
9
Rachel slept for a while in the sleeping bag on the altar.
When she awoke for a second time, a fresh plate of food was sitting beside her, alongside another glass of water.
She sat up in the bag and stretched her arms over her head. Her body was stiff and creaky like she’d been asleep for days, but to her surprise most of the aches and pains of the car crash were gone. Whether that was down to youth or her gifts she didn’t know.
Rachel pulled at the collar of her coat, bringing it together to ward off the cold from her neck. She tugged at the hood, bringing it over her forehead. It was freezing inside the church even if the candlelight atmosphere did make it look cozy. Rachel hated the cold – it had been so long since she’d felt the sun on her face that she’d almost forgotten what the rays felt like. Sometimes she dreamed about the sun and about walking barefoot on a beach of golden sand. There were always lots of other people in her dream too, sunbathing, playing beach volleyball or swimming in the ocean. It felt so real she could almost taste the salt in the Pacific.
She reached for the glass of water. As she drank it all down, there was a flurry of movement to her right. The other kids were still sitting on the wooden benches, watching her. Had they been there all the time while she slept? Now that she was awake they didn’t seem to be mindful or embarrassed about the fact that they were still staring at her.
Rachel took a sip of water. There was no sign of the old woman.
The kids muttered under their breath to one another. There were all sorts of ages down there on the benches – the lanky boy with the spiky hair was the oldest looking, although he’d said he was only twelve. The others might have been anywhere between the ages of five and thirteen.
The spiky-haired boy whispered something into the ear of a pretty black girl sitting beside him. The girl nodded and said something back. Then she shoved the boy off the bench with a surprising amount of brute force. The boy was thrust forward, an anxious look on his face as he crept towards the altar. Towards Rachel. He was wearing a long black winter coat, several sizes too big, that went all the way down to his feet. A matching pair of fingerless gloves clung to his long, pale fingers.
“Are you okay?” Rachel asked the boy.
He jumped back, albeit briefly. The other children giggled at his back.
The boy nodded his head.
“Yeah f-f-fine,” he said. “It’s just…”
“Where’s the old lady?” Rachel said, cutting in. “What did she say her name was? Grandma Anna?”
The boy swallowed hard. He opened his mouth but no words came out.
“Sleeping,” the black girl said. She got to her feet and walked over to the edge of the altar.
“Don’t mind Stutter here,” the girl said, pointing a thumb at the boy. “He’s the oldest so he takes it on himself to be our spokesperson. Trouble is he can’t speak too good and that’s not much use is it? Not if you want to be a spokesperson and all.”
Rachel looked at Stutter. She thought briefly about her dad whose breakthrough role as an actor had come in the 1980s in The Forever Boys where he’d played a kid with an even worse stutter than the tall boy. He’d done such a good job in the movie that later on in life, much to his annoyance, people still referred to Rachel’s dad as the stutter kid.
“What’s your name?” Rachel asked the girl.
“Tegan,” the girl said.
An uncomfortable silence followed.
“Are you guys okay?” Rachel asked. “You’re not scared of me are you?”
Stutter shook his head and tried to say something. When the words stalled at the tip of his tongue, he turned around to the others for support. But the other kids weren’t exactly jumping in to save him. Rachel gave Stutter and the kids an encouraging smile. They looked like a bunch of abandoned children whose parents had forgotten about them. Like items of lost luggage that hadn’t been claimed.
Tegan looked at Rachel and shrugged. There was mildly embarrassed look on her face.
“Yeah I guess we’re acting kind of weird,” she said. “Thing is Rachel, you’re like a legend around these parts. We’ve been hearing stories about you from Grandma Anna for a long time now. Then she took us out in the bus and we saw for ourselves what you could do. Wow, all that cool stuff with turning the lights on and off – it’s awesome. And then you tried to grab our bus – that was insane! Let’s face it – you’re the girl who stood up to the Black Widow. That makes you a legend in my book. When I saw that ghost woman for the first time I damn near pissed my pants.”
There was more giggling at their backs.
Rachel smiled. “Me too,” she said.
“Yeah?” Tegan said. “Man, she was so creepy with those eyes. And yet according to Grandma Anna, I could have kicked her ass just like you did. But I guess I didn’t have your guts, huh? How were we supposed to know she couldn’t hurt us with her mind voodoo?”
A couple of the other kids crept closer to the altar, as if reassured by the progress of the conversation so far. Stutter was standing at the front of the group, grinning at Rachel. It was clear by the way he was shifting back and forth that he wanted to say something.
Tegan looked at the boy and frowned.
“Spit it out Stutter,” she said. “You might look like the village idiot but you don’t need to act like one.”
Stutter nodded.
”How do you d-do that thing?” he asked Rachel. He took a deep breath before tackling the second sentence. “That th-thing when all the light comes up on your body. It’s so cool.”
More giggling from the benches.
Rachel thought she heard somebody whisper ‘Stutter loves Rachel’.
“The shield?” Rachel said, ignoring the rest of the kids. “I think about it and it just happens.”
“Make your eyes go black!” a little kid with red hair said. He edged closer to the altar, but stayed behind Tegan and Stutter. The boy was tiny, barely reaching up to Stutter’s waist.
“Maybe later,” Rachel said. “It kind of freaks me out to be honest.”
Rachel hadn’t been around any kids her own age for a long time. Now they were acting like she was the most popular kid in school. Rachel guessed that this was what it had been like for her dad back in his Hollywood heyday. He’d been a big star a long time ago, w
ay back in the eighties. All that attention, it was easy to see how people could get addicted to it.
The little red haired kid stepped ahead of the others.
“They call me Benji,” he said.
“Hi Benji,” Rachel said.
“Your dad’s Cody MacLeod isn’t he?” Benji said. The boy’s eyes shone with excitement.
“Yeah,” Rachel said.
She was used to people asking about her famous dad. It had been going on for most of her life, whether they were talking about his films or like some of the meaner kids at school, the drink and drugs years and how he’d wasted his talent. That was their parents talking through them – usually the dads who were jealous of Cody MacLeod.
“I just want to tell you that I love The Forever Boys,” Benji said. “Your old man is awesome in it. It’s so cool – it was my mom’s favorite movie ever. Hey if he’s still alive when this is all over do you think he’ll give me his autograph?”
Tegan looked at Benji.
“Her dad may be cool but he’s not as cool as Rachel,” she said. “Her dad can’t make his eyes go black can he? He can’t put a big wall of funky light around his body and make the cars dance. Right Rachel?”
Rachel opened her mouth to say something but Benji cut in.
“Shut up Tegan!” he said.
Rachel didn’t know if Benji had something wrong with him or he was just naturally short but the kid was tiny. Munchkin tiny. It didn’t stop him standing up for himself though. “Rachel is super cool of course but don’t diss The Forever Boys.”
Benji looked at Rachel and smiled.
“Will he give me his autograph?” he said. “You think he will?”
“Sure,” Rachel said. “Just don’t call him the stutter kid.”
Benji was grinning from ear to ear. He reached an arm out and slapped the lanky boy standing beside him on the arm.
“No way,” he said. “We’ve got our own stutter kid right here.”
“That we have,” Tegan said, smiling.
Rachel took another biscuit off the plate. It tasted good, if a little too sugary. Or maybe she’d just eaten too many of them.
Mega Post-Apocalyptic Double Bill Page 82