by J. M. Pierce
“Answer the question!” yelled Dawson as he stepped into Cliff’s face.
Cliff snapped to and apologized. “I’m sorry, sir, getting old doesn’t help a man’s attention span. What was your question, sir?”
“What can you tell me about Nicole Paxton?” asked the man.
Cliff began his reply with a huff as he shook his head. “That poor girl; she’s a nice girl that has been through way too much, and didn’t ask for none of it. I don’t think she can take much more.”
“Do Ms. Paxton and Mr. Davis have a relationship?” asked the man.
Cliff had very clearly heard the question before it was asked and replied deceptively, “There are all kinds of relationships, sir. Do they like each other? Yes. Does she still want to be involved? I don’t think so. If you were an eighteen-year-old girl whose boyfriend had turned into some kind of supernatural force, on top of which he’s being hunted for the murder of his mother, which way would you be leaning?”
“Do you think Mr. Davis will come back for her?” asked the man.
“No, sir. I think that the shock of his mother’s death did somethin’ to him. He’s afraid of hurtin’ anyone else. I don’t know what he’s goin’ to do,” replied Cliff with a sigh.
His statement was the truth. Cliff didn’t know what Test was going to do. The massive pressure and energy in the hotel room had prohibited Cliff from getting into Test’s head. What Cliff did know was that, at seventy, he was in a pretty bad spot and not sure how it would turn out. He had to somehow reach Test.
*****
Nicole lay in her hospital bed, feeling fine and wondering why she was there. Her mother and father had been by her side since she had arrived. Not once had her mom or dad brought up Test’s name. After about an hour, her dad had to leave. Nicole was a daddy’s girl, and his leaving her after all she’d been through to go to work hurt her feelings. With her father gone, the last hour alone with her mother had been dominated by uncomfortable silence. Mercifully, the torture was broken by a knock at the door.
“Hey Nicole!” said Marcy as she walked in with Mark right behind her.
“Hey!” replied Nicole, sitting up in her bed.
Kathy Paxton stood up. “Hello, kids. I don’t know if this is a good time. Nicole needs to get her rest.”
“Are you serious, Mom? That’s all I’ve done today is rest. I’m about to go insane from the silence,” replied Nicole in contempt as she noticed Mark’s face. Both eyes were blackened, and his bottom lip was split. “What the hell happened to you?” she asked in shock.
“Nothing, it’s no big deal,” he replied, quickly turning away from her.
“Was it Chad?” asked Nicole.
“Actually it was Justin,” replied Marcy.
Mark turned and snapped at Marcy in a scolding voice. “Marcy!”
Marcy placed her hand on his chest. “It’s okay. There was nothing that you could have done. You don’t have anything to be ashamed of.”
“What happened, Mark? You can tell me,” asked Nicole in a more gentle voice.
Mark shoved his hands in his pockets. “There’s nothing to say. Justin came to my house looking for payback the morning after the pasture party and kicked my ass. It’s that simple. He knew that he couldn’t do anything to Test, so he found me instead,” he replied, clearly upset and embarrassed.
The uncomfortable silence once again entered the room. Kathy took her seat, and Mark and Marcy stood at the end of Nicole’s bed.
“So are you going to be able to make graduation?” asked Marcy.
“Wow!” replied Nicole. “To be honest, I’d almost completely forgotten about it.”
“Well its not like you haven’t been preoccupied!” said Marcy regretfully.
“I don’t think—”
Nicole cut off her mother. “Of course I’m going to be at graduation.” She stared at her mother with angry eyes.
Kathy picked up her purse and stood. “You know, Nicole . . .” She paused, her face tense with frustration. Waving her hands across each other, she continued. “Forget it. I’m going to go and get something to eat.”
Kathy quickly walked past Mark and Marcy and glared at them. “You kids need to keep it short,” she hissed as she opened the door.
“Okay, Mrs. Paxton, we will,” replied Mark in a smart-aleck tone.
Once the door closed, Marcy walked to the side of the bed to where Kathy had been sitting. She looked at Nicole, hesitant to ask the question that she wanted to ask.
“What is it?” asked Nicole.
From the end of the bed, Mark asked the question. “Where is he? Is he okay?”
Nicole lay back down and looked to the window. “I don’t know, Mark, I really don’t. Things have changed. He’s changed,” replied Nicole, the pain in her voice causing her bottom lip to quiver. She looked to Marcy. “I love him, but I don’t know if I can take any more.”
She cried.
Marcy leaned across Nicole and attempted to comfort her. “I can’t imagine,” she replied, “All of the running and hiding is a lot to ask of anyone.”
“It’s not that, Marcy. I’d hide the rest of my life with him if it weren’t for . . .” Nicole stopped.
Mark watched her, anxiously awaiting the rest of her sentence. “What?” he asked.
Nicole looked at Mark’s battered face. “He’s changing, Mark. He’s not just Test anymore.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Last night was the first I’d seen it. Something inside him is changing. He’s still the same person in the sense that he is still the loving, caring, and kind person that I fell in love with.” She paused and composed herself. “But he is most definitely not the same.”
She described the horrors of the morning and described in detail Test’s physical traits during the last breakdown. An hour went by, and the three friends talked and consoled one another. But when Nicole’s mother returned, the conversation stopped abruptly.
Kathy stormed into the room. “Okay you two, time to go,” she ordered.
Nicole rolled her eyes and looked to her friends. “As soon as I’m out of here, I’ll call you guys. I promise.”
“You’d better,” replied Marcy as she offered Nicole a hug.
Mark stood at the end of the bed, conspicuously silent. He was no longer the happy-go-lucky guy. He had lost his best friend and his dignity in the same twenty-four-hour span.
“See ya, Mark,” said Nicole, trying to lighten the mood. “You take care of yourself, okay?”
Mark remained silent, but with a half-hearted smile nodded. Marcy walked over to him and took his hand.
“Good bye, Mrs. Paxton,” said Marcy politely.
Perturbed, Kathy quickly glanced to them and replied, “Good bye, kids.”
As Mark opened the door, he nearly collided with a man standing in the doorway. Mark and Marcy walked past him, looking over their shoulders as they left the room. The man entered the room behind them and closed the door inches from Marcy’s face.
Nicole greeted the man defiantly. “Hello, Agent Dawson.”
Chapter 22
Isolation
Test hadn’t slept much for the last couple of days, not since the hotel in York. He had come back to Lincoln only because he didn’t know where else to go and had found refuge in an old grain elevator on the south side of town.
His world was now drastically different than it had been just days before. His only source of food had been some scraps that he had found in a trash dumpster behind a bar near the elevator. He felt like a vampire, only coming out at night for fear of being seen. His face was now rough from a week’s worth of stubble.
While he had settled in the elevator’s old offices, the place was far from comforting. The walls were filled with holes, and the windows riddled with cracks and missing shards of glass. The floors were covered with broken tiles, some even missing completely, leaving hardened glue and pebbles in spots. His bed was a pile of grain bags that he had scavenged fr
om around the elevator’s vast number of storage rooms. The mice were everywhere, but oddly, Test considered them roommates and really didn’t pay them much attention.
A great depression had overtaken him. The death of his mother had hit him hard. The fact that he was now an orphan wasn’t a reality that he had ever imagined. Of course, there were lots of things about his life that he would have never considered. The more he thought about Nicole, the more he realized that he had to let her go. He couldn’t visualize the girl swinging next to him in the park any more. The vision of her in the hotel room was burned into his mind, the look of horror on her face inescapable. And then there was Cliff, the man who had turned into Test’s guardian angel. A man with abilities of his own and quite possibly the only one who could understand what Test was going through. He wished that he knew what had happened to Cliff, but at the same time agonized over attempts of avoiding speculation. Even so, Test was fairly certain that the police had taken both Nicole and Cliff. Maybe that was the best thing? he thought. Their chances of being hurt drop dramatically with me gone! Pacing back and forth, he realized the selfishness in his thoughts. He could turn himself in and his friends could not only be safe, but free. His mind had become a battlefield for conflicting thoughts, and it seemed there could be no winner.
As the sun set, he felt anxious and yearned to get out of his prison. As he looked out the south-facing windows, he saw one lone tree in his line of sight. The oak tree was tall and broad branching, something that he would have wanted to climb when he was younger. The gift of flight had taken away a little of climbing’s luster, though he yearned for the simple pleasures that only childhood could provide. He walked to the door and stepped outside. The sun wasn’t yet set, but he couldn’t resist the urge to climb the oak. He looked all around to make sure that there was no one to see him. Knowing that he could pulse and fly to the tree in a matter of seconds didn’t change the fact that he wanted to walk. He needed it to feel normal. Quickly, he strode across the yard and over the railroad tracks to the tree. Once he reached the oak, he stood at its base and marveled at its majesty. The trunk had to have been six foot around, so big that he couldn’t reach his arms around it, and as he looked up, the limbs spread out wide as if to welcome him in. He reached up for the first limb. As he pulled himself up, he had the rush of a child that he craved. He reached for the next branch, and then the next. Within a matter of seconds, he was midway up the tree, well hidden from view by the blanket of leaves around him. To his right, a pattern of light danced over the naked branch on which he sat. Eyes closed, he moved his face into the light and let the sun bathe him in warmth, the bright orange light shining through his eyelids.
Suddenly, he flashed back to the hotel room, and to the moment of discovery. The glow from his hands had shone through his eyelids, just as the sun was now shining into his closed eyes. He recalled the enormity of the power surging inside him. The glow radiated from within, not from the surface of the skin, but actually from the inside. The thought of the power made him feel giddy. At the time, it was horrifying, but the reflection of the moment played on the back of his eyelids like an old movie, and it was exciting.
He held his eyes closed until the sun was no longer hitting his face. He inhaled the breeze one last time and then opened his eyes. He felt renewed and energized, although he was famished and longed for a home-cooked meal. But he knew that was a dream. This thought made him chuckle. The fact that he was a fugitive with superhuman abilities had become his reality, and the thought of a home-cooked meal, having nowhere to go, had in turn become a dream. He climbed down the tree and once at the bottom branch jumped to the ground. Kneeling by the base, he shielded himself from the view of the bar just a hundred or so yards away. He scanned the area once again, making sure that he hadn’t been noticed. Feeling confident that it was safe, he stood tall. The thought of a meal overtook his thoughts. The pickings of the dumpster were less than filling, and it took everything in his being to bring himself to eat out of the trash anyway. What if I just walked into the bar? he thought. I haven’t shaved for days; maybe I’d get in without being noticed? He walked toward the bar before his mind had even finished its argument, and in what seemed like seconds, he found himself at the door. He stood nervously and looked through the glass, trying his best to be inconspicuous. There were very few people inside as it was still pretty early in the evening. His nerves were sky rocketing, and he could feel the fire inside begin to kindle. Control it. He could hear Cliff’s voice repeating over and over. He took a couple of deep breaths and then, feeling as though he might as well be walking off a cliff, walked through the door.
The first thing that he noticed as he entered was an unpleasant smell that reminded him of home. Years of cigarette smoke and spilled liquor oozed from every strand of fabric in the chairs and carpeting. He stood at the entrance, feeling like a defenseless rabbit in a room full of wolves, and flinched heavily when he heard a voice from his right ask unexpectedly, “Can I help you?”
Test turned to see a middle-aged woman with sandy blonde hair. She was a little on the heavy side and wearing a gray tank top with the bar’s logo across the front. Her heaving large breasts struggled to stay concealed outside the low and wide cut of the tank top. Scared to death, Test stuttered, “Yeah, I was just wanting to eat.”
“Well, you just sit anywhere you like, and I’ll be right with you,” replied the woman.
He found the nearest table and took a seat. He was surprised at how easily he had been accepted. I guess it’s not like I’m asking for a beer, he thought.
“Okay, honey, my name is Christy. Did you need a menu, hon?” she asked.
“Um, do you have a hamburger and fries?” asked Test.
“Sure do. What do you want on that, hon?” she replied with a smile, holding a pen with a pink feather taped to the top.
“Everything,” replied Test excitedly.
“Anything to drink?” she asked.
“Just water, please,” replied Test. “Oh, I guess I’ll take a Mountain Dew if you’ve got it.”
“We do,” she replied, hurriedly writing on her note pad. “All right, hon, I’ll be right back.”
Test watched her walk away. She was nice, and he felt bad for what he was going to have to do. He knew coming in that he didn’t have any money, but he figured if he could just eat, he knew that he could run to the door fast enough and once outside, could fly back to the elevator before anyone could see him.
He looked around and noticed a television over the bar. Wheel of Fortune was on. It made him think of his mom. She used to watch it, back when they could afford cable anyway. At the bar sat a man who had to be in his mid-fifties. He was rail thin with a long white beard and a black Harley Davidson ball cap on. He was hunched over the bar with a bottle of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The ash on his cigarette was two thirds the length of the cigarette, leaving Test to wonder if the man was awake or asleep. Finally he lifted his bottle of beer. He mumbled a few lines of incoherent babble and then took a drink. Test could imagine that this man might have been Mark in forty years if it hadn’t have been for Marcy.
“Here you go, hon!”
Test jumped and turned.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the waitress with a laugh. “I didn’t mean to scare ya.”
Test rubbed at his stubbly cheeks. “No, you’re fine,” he replied. “I was just thinking too hard. Man, you guys really serve fast!” he said excitedly, turning his attention to the plate and practically drooling over it.
“I try, honey. Did you need anything else?” she asked, already taking a couple of steps away from the table.
“I think I’m good,” he replied, with the burger already midway to his mouth.
“Well just holler if you need anything then,” she replied, her back turned and walking away.
It had been too long since he’d had a warm meal. While it was far from it, Test devoured the burger like it was the best he’d ever had. After a couple of
bites, he looked around. There was a newspaper sitting on the table to his left. He reached over and grabbed the paper, shoving another bite of burger into his mouth at the same time. As he spread out the paper in front of him, it wasn’t the headline that caught his eye; it was the smaller article in the lower right-hand corner. The title of the article read “Accomplice to the Unnatural,” and next to it was a picture of Cliff in handcuffs. Test quickly pushed his plate to the side and read:
“Clifford Johnston, age seventy, was brought up on charges today . . .”
He stopped reading. While he knew that this was more than likely what had happened, seeing his friend in the picture now made Test understand his responsibility.
What the hell is the matter with you? he thought. You’ve been slumming around feeling sorry for yourself while your friend is in trouble solely because of you.
He looked back down to the paper to view the picture once again. Cliff was being led by a couple of officers into a building. Test noticed a park in the background. A light came on in his mind, and he knew exactly where they were. When he was a freshman, he and Mark had volunteered for the public access channel. They had thought that getting to run sound cables and what not would somehow help them prepare for rock stardom. Why would they take him there? he asked himself. And then it hit him. The public access studio was in an old armory, and in the basement was a nuclear fallout shelter.
“They’re afraid,” he spoke aloud, a feeling of power washing over him.
“Who’s afraid of what, hon?” asked the waitress as she walked by.
He jumped once again. “Christy, you are pretty good at sneaking up on people. You know it?”
“I try,” she said with a giggle. “You doing okay?”
“Fine, thanks,” he replied, covering the article with his arms.