I sprinted back towards the other end of the car, scooping one of the gas canisters off the ground in one hand. They were quite heavy, even after dispensing their payload, so I threw it with all my might as I ran, aiming right for the small of the nearest gunman’s back. I felt my body moving with grace I didn’t know I had and sent the metal projectile winging off. He seemed to hear the movement through the air right before it hit as he started to turn into the throw.
The canister slammed against his humerus. The gun dropped to the deck as the man let out a muffled howl of pain, clutching his arm. That howl brought the attention of his two friends. If they had had any care for the safety of their compatriots, there was no chance they would try to shoot at me with him still standing and me so far down the car.
Much to my surprise, both gunmen started shooting, spraying bullets down the length of the rail car. If I hadn’t been in that mysterious state of focus, I would have certainly been shot if not killed. However, with time seeming to move in molasses, I saw the twitch of trigger fingers and the jerk of gun barrels barely a moment before the muzzle flare.
I forced myself down to the ground, saving myself for a few moments. The sounds of bullets on metal filled the air, accompanied by another strange impact. As I started to scramble to my feet, I could feel the strange sensation of Pushed powers around me: the air was considerably colder than it was.
Between the gunmen and their targets was now a solid wall of ice. Extinguisher, his shoulder bloodied from a stray bullet, had one hand raised up, the other spread out behind him. The gas was starting to freeze up into clumps of sickly green crystals and fall to the floor. The others were starting to stir as the ice wall began to be chipped through. I looked at them, they seemed to be locked in silent conference again, then stuck my head out the door to see where we were.
It was still quite dark out and we were at a rail station. From the buzz of crickets and the sounds of distant wildlife, it was definitely an out-of-the way location. Unfortunately, past the rural locale and the nearby cattle farm, there was not much to go on for location.
More importantly, there was a small cadre of camouflaged grunts lingering outside. They seemed fairly complacent for a group of terrorists hi-jacking a train, so much so that it was a full second before any of them reacted to the masked woman sticking her head out of the rail car. To one side, I heard what had to be the sounds of what happens when normal men with guns run into a group of super-powered beings.
Having already exposed myself, I felt I had no choice but to capitalize on the moment of surprise. Rational Irene was a proponent of the plan to take cover back in the rail car and let the bulletproof people handle this. More and more, I was finding that I didn’t listen to Rational Irene much.
I sprinted towards the men as they fumbled for their rifles and, as they first started to take a bead, I sidestepped and flattened myself against one of the posts supporting the station’s overhang. The smell of gunpowder and the sounds of metal spanging off of metal filled the air. I was so in tune with my sense at that moment I felt like I could hear the exact moment their fingers let off of the triggers.
That’s when I moved out from my little patch of cover and sprang forward into the midst of them. I threw a wild but powerful punch at one of them, colliding straight with his jaw, then swung another thug by his belt into his friend beside him. Having fought someone who knew how to fight just the other day, I could tell these guys weren’t professionals. From their lack of discipline to their ragtag dress, this had to be some kind of radical homegrown terrorist thing.
One of them grabbed me from behind around the waist, but I twisted suddenly, slipping free of his grasp. The last of the five I had dove into raised her rifle, insane considering I was in the middle of her friends. The suicidal part of me that was in control at the moment instantly reacted by slapping the gun barrel hard to the left, sending a spray of automatic weapon fire along the wall of the station. My ears were ringing from gunfire, but I ignored it and pushed at the crazy woman with a hard flat boot to her chest.
To my surprise, the kick sent her ass over tea kettle off the side of the station’s deck. That’s when luck and whatever crazy cocktail of super adrenaline was in my system gave out. The one I had first punched apparently hadn’t decided to fall conveniently unconscious and had the presence of mind to snap his rifle butt into the back of my head.
The impact threw me forward and I knew instantly that there would be a nicely oozing laceration in my scalp. I was again in a strange sense of wonderment at how compartmentalized my mind was in this state. The pain was just an indicator of damage, checked off, and then promptly ignored. Lack of real pain aside, I still hit the ground and did the rudimentary breakfall I learned on day 1 of self-defense, rolling to a half-crouch. That was more than enough time to have two men with rifles level them directly at me.
Fortunately for me, one man seemed to fall into instant convulsions as my gut twisted from the Push energies coming from behind me. The second was dropped simultaneously by some kind of force beam that threw him in a heap against the far wall. As I rose to my feet, I heard the snap of air instantly freezing to ice behind me, maybe around the crazy lady with the gun and the last thug found himself on the wrong end of a super-strong man with six arms. By the time I was on my feet, the assault on the train was ended handily.
“Who-” I began.
“They are part of a fringe group of extremists,” Mind’s Eye abruptly informed me. “They call themselves Humans For God. They were informed by ... I cannot discern in their minds ... someone about our rail trip.”
I felt out the bloody spot on my head as I could feel the focus starting to fade. One last thought crept in as my mind seemed to slow back to normal: This had to have been orchestrated not by these bozos, but by someone else. Everything from the ground up was beyond what a bunch of backwoods bigots could throw together: the weapons, the information, the planning. I imagined any minute now there would be press and photographers to tell the story of the heroes fighting off the racist terrorists threatening the train.
“Hey, really odd question right now,” I glanced over at the Indian seer, trying to stymie my bleeding. “Blame it on the head wound but did you foresee Epic getting you on this train?” Her face quirked and her blind eyes were lost in thought a few moments.
“Now that you mention it ... I did not. I merely assumed, at the time, that I was still acclimating to my abilities.”
Mind's Eye shrugged slightly, about to say something else, when, as if on cue, a contingent of Atlanta press, held up by delayed flights at the airport and taking the alternate train route to Washington, were disgorged from another passenger car, eager to take snap shots and capture a fresh scoop for their paper-slash-website-slash-tabloid. Not one of them seemed to care that two people were dead, even if they were terrorists. While I was forced to stand there, keep my mouth shut, and wave to the press, it was Brooks who pointed out what I was already thinking over my earpiece.
“This smells like a set-up. A big, fat set-up.”
Chapter 13 Capitol
Four hours of sleep interrupted by an assassination attempt did not make for a happy Irene, but there was nothing for it. I was woken not by the announcement of our final stop in Washington, but that insatiable hunger gnawing at my belly. I pushed myself to my elbows and glanced around the dining car my group of new friends had commandeered.
Most of them were napping themselves, a fact I put down to coming down off of adrenaline, save for Medusa, who, along with all of her snake hairs, was focused on a game of what I assumed was solitaire. After seeing one of those thugs carted off in solid stone form last night, I couldn’t help but feel a shiver whenever I saw her now. While the powers and changes in the Pushed were almost phantasmal to me, the aftermath was all too real for everyone. One of the snake-hair-things flicked it’s tongue in my direction.
“Good morning, sssleepy-head,” Medusa beamed. I hadn’t noticed she had fangs before, though I
wasn’t surprised. “It’sss not long now until we get to Wassshington.” She flipped over another card as I gingerly felt my head; the wound was nicely scabbed over.
“Great,” I lied enthusiastically. “Hopefully there’s enough time for breakfast. I’m famished!” As I put in a call for breakfast, I glanced at Medusa. “What do you make of those gunmen?”
Medusa's hair hissed at the mention of last night’s shenanigans, as she shook her head, flipping more cards.
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “I’m jussst ssorry I had to bite one.” Her reptilian face twisted oddly, but I could read the conflict in her human face. “I want to help people not turn them to ssstone.”
“I agree with you, completely,” I said. “I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t going to do someone some good, but, to flip the coin, they weren’t hesitating to try to kill us. I mean, I don’t want to make excuses but ...” I shook my head, feeling very displeased with myself.
“Okay, it is an excuse. Still, if you had no other choice, you had no other choice.” The snake-woman looked back to her cards, a frown etched on her features.
thought about that little conversation as I ate my triple breakfast. It was so easy to justify death. Him or me, for the greater good, I had no choice. I couldn’t blame them for feeling that way: no matter how amateur those guys were, they were still committed to killing all six of them and who knows how many others. I still couldn’t let myself fall into the trap of mimicking that thinking.
Compromises like that could lead down a slippery slope, both towards giving in to the Whiteout’s mental lure and down to a moral event horizon. I couldn’t let myself falter because I genuinely liked these people, as cruel as that sounded. Those glum but important thoughts were still bouncing in my head when, over the train’s speakers, the end of the line in Washington, DC, was announced.
“So when we get done here and save the day and go back to Atlanta we have so got to form a team because darnit meeting you guys has been the most awesome time I’ve had in a long time and it just seems like the smart idea you know so that we can all do more stuff safer and all of that,” the Human Tank asked, stated, or some combination there of.
Our motley crew of Pushed had finished disembarking on to the main platform in Union Station in the heart of our nation’s capitol. I nodded absently at Tank as Extinguisher added an enthusiastic agreement to the concept; I was hoping that after this, it would be a non-issue. Hopefully this whole nightmare would be over with soon.
However, what was really distracting me was that creeping crawling sense over my skin. Something big was coming and so far, there was only one person that caused my Push sensitivity to go off so badly. I craned my neck around. I wanted to see him coming.
I didn’t see Epic immediately as something else caught my attention. Ironically, it was when I glanced back at my new-found friends that I saw it. Each and everyone of them was doing the same thing I was. It was if they picked up on the same unnatural aura that made me sick to my stomach, but there wasn’t a bit of discomfort among them. It reminded me of a dog’s response when they first catch the smell of a familiar playmate.
I could only assume that this was the ‘pulse’ they had talked about last night. They felt the link they shared with the others that had been changed, while I only felt their twisting of the reality around them. No wonder they had been so suspicious earlier: I didn't carry the proper 'scent' for who I said I was.
It was the rays of faint white light that caused me to return to my search for Epic. It struck me as ironic that I, the normal unchanged person, was the one in disguise while the man tucked in a god’s body flaunted himself out in the open. With that came the realization that these few days had made me very bitter in thought towards my former lover.
Eric hovered a few inches off the ground, but with his new body's height, it made him tower over most everyone on the platform. He glanced down periodically to talk to someone, but I couldn’t see for sure who through the press of the crowd. I couldn’t help but start to feel my muscles tense and the adrenaline begin to flow. Classic fight-or-flight preparation was in full gear. It took all of my willpower to hold steady where I was and wait to see how he would react.
“There he is!” Hexagon waved all six of his arms. “Shoot, it sure is nice of him to come see us in person, ain’t it?”
“Fascinating,” was Mind’s Eye’s response. “Also, alarming.” If she was actually alarmed, she didn’t show it. “My vision of the future has become completely obscured. Nothing but gray, red, and black swirls.”
That is when he saw me through the crowd. I had wondered why he had taken so long to notice me, but I realized, as Eric picked up the pace of his hover after a word with his companion, that if I were a blind spot to one kind of superhuman senses, maybe I was blind to others as well. I really felt stupid for not trying to test my new situation more rigorously as I was literally walking into the jaws of the beast with no concrete idea of my assets and limitations.
The rest of my companions seemed pleased as punch for their inspiration to show up. I couldn’t help but notice that the crowd literally parted as Eric approached alone, splitting and merging in time with his movements. Similarly, there was a zone of space around my Pushed friends. It was that same fascination mixed with fear I had seen on the highway during the Push Battle, causing a peculiar orbit of moving people who wanted to be near, but not too close.
Extinguisher took the lead and offered a handshake as Eric’s personal bubble seemed to merge with our own.
“It’s great to see you again, Epic, ” he began.
Eric barely seemed to register him, both sets of his eyes gazing holes through me. I returned the stare right back, focusing on Eric’s real eyes. It seemed to unnerve him after a moment as he turned away and finally took the fire fighter’s outstretched hand and shook it.
“I am very pleased to see that you all arrived safely,” Epic said, nodding like a proud father. “Even more so, I am happy to see that you have all found each other and stayed together.” He glanced at me again. “You even found one of us that I somehow missed. I am thankful for your hard work, Extinguisher. There -”
“You don’t need to play ignorant, Epic,” I interrupted. “They know we know each other. It’s fine.” One of those craggy new brows arched and he nodded slowly.
“Right,” the fireman said. “We’re not picking a side in whatever argument you two have; we’re only here to support the cause and show what kind of good we can do for people.” Extinguisher’s statement was backed up by a general round of assent from the others.
“That’s something at least, Roman,” Agent Brooks chimed in my ear. “You can’t get people on your side until you get them to the point of not being on anybody’s side.”
“I’m willing to play nice if you are,” I said, offering my hand up to Epic’s floating form. There was an unsettling gleam in his eyes as he took my hand. I could feel my skin and muscles literally try to flee from contact with the phantasmal flesh; I tried to mask how bizarre it had to look as my hand sunk through part of his outer shape. There was something going on inside of his head that sent a shiver up my spine, but there wasn’t anything I could do based on intuition alone. We shook hands quickly.
“Of course,” he replied. “Our situation politically is shaky at best. It would be for the best that all of us put aside even significant differences to come together for the good of the Pushed and the good of the world.”
“He has quite the Messiah complex,” Agent Choi noted. I had very mixed feelings about my FBI peanut gallery, but that I could agree with wholeheartedly.
Eric finally turned away from me and hovered into the center of our little group. I could see the effort it took to return his visage to the beneficent demigod he favored us with when he first hovered up. The image of a prophet going into his flock and offering them a chance to be touched by his divinity came to mind. I was glad I was on the fringe of the cluster as he put his arms out to shake
hands and embrace the others.
“You have all already faced adversity alone and together and remained true to your principles.” Even his voice carried the timber of a god casting down proclamations. “I believe you may be the core of something greater: a true collection of those among us who wish to do good in the world. As you have already taken the first step, I wish to share with you what it is that I will propose today to our brothers and sisters.”
The Human Tank cheered and clapped his hands like any hero-worshipping teenager might. The others seemed just as eager, except for Medusa. I hadn’t noticed before now, but she had seemed increasingly more reticent in the face of all of Epic’s preaching. We caught each other’s glances for a moment before she looked away. That doubt and unease from earlier this morning seemed to linger in her still-human eyes.
“We’re ready to listen when you’re ready to speak,” Extinguisher told Eric. When I had the chance, I felt certain I would need to try to change the firefighter’s mind next; he seemed to be the one the others looked to for direction. Epic folded his arms and let his brow crease in thought.
“I can’t believe he’s about to go into detail about his plans with you right there, Irene,” Rachel remarked. “He’s even more arrogant than you suggested.”
“Before I take you to a safe, secure place, we must unfortunately make separate accommodations for our mutual friend here,” Eric swept an arm towards me. “She is not one of us. She doesn’t have the Pulse in her veins.” He faked another saintly smile in my direction.
“I am most beholden to you for taking a stand on the side of the good and the righteous, but what comes next is something that is only safe for the ears of the empowered among us.” My new friends seemed confused, but it was Medusa who made a coherent sentence first.
“That makesss no sssense,” she said, her snakes dancing around her head. “Ssshe hasss powersss; we all sssaw her in action, both on video and in perssson. Even if we can’t feel it, how can ssshe have powersss and not have the Pulssse?”
The Push Chronicles (Book 1): Indomitable Page 11