by Kai Strand
Source stared at Jeff with foreboding. He gnawed his lower lip and glanced at the deionizer hanging from Jeff’s belt loop. “Yeah, let’s go find Oceanus.”
Jeff kept his eyes slammed shut most of the ride, concentrating on not catching the car on fire or crunching it like a wrecker with gravity each time they bounced over a pothole or strayed onto the soft shoulder.
Occasionally, Gyro gently prompted Delfina with “you need to correct to the left about 10 degrees, dear” or “the road ends up ahead. Are you prepared to change direction?”
Delfina seemed to feel the need to explain how guiding worked. “I know where we need to arrive, but the course to get there isn’t revealed as clearly. Often, I won’t know I’m driving off the road until I’m four by-ing over cactus or the front end of the vehicle is stuffed into a ditch. Gyro has learned how to prompt caution.”
Jeff wasn’t sure if the nausea he felt was due to her explanation, or because he was squished between the door and Don Juan. Dapper Don’s pectoral muscles occupied two thirds of the backseat, and both Jeff and Set were mashed into their corners like little kids.
“I thought you said you haven’t taken a job since you lost your sight,” Jeff said through clenched teeth.
“We haven’t. Taken a job, that is. But we’ve used our skills plenty of times since,” Gyro said and then he switched to his tour guide voice. “Delfina, dear, the blacktop ends ahead, and the road continues as dirt. It doesn’t look well groomed, and I don’t think this car can really handle the terrain at high speed.”
Thankfully, Delfina slowed considerably before they bounced onto the forest service road.
“How much further?” Jeff asked. He would clutch his stomach if he could move his arm, but Don had it trapped against the backseat. Telltale prickles sparked, alerting Jeff to the fact that he was losing the feeling in it.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Delfina sighed. “Soon, sort of. I think.”
Jeff groaned and returned to concentrating on tamping down his abilities, which buzzed just under his skin like a hive of angry bees.
They bounced and lurched long enough that Jeff lost track of time. Finally, the car fishtailed to a halt, throwing up a plume of sandy dirt ten feet into the air. Jeff threw the car door open and spilled out onto the desert floor, inhaling a lung full of sand in the process.
“Polar!” Gyro called over his shoulder. “A bit of caution?”
Jeff stood and squinted through the settling dust. The sun clicked toward the western horizon, drawing oblong shadows of cactus and shrubs. Jeff turned slowly in a circle, shielding his eyes against the blaze of late afternoon light. “There’s nothing here.”
“She’s here alright,” Gyro said, supporting his lower back as he stood.
“It’s a ghost town,” Set said. He and Don stood next to Gyro.
Jeff opened the driver’s door and offered his hand to Señora Valdez. He tucked her arm under his and escorted her across the uneven terrain to her husband.
“Thank you, Jeff,” she murmured.
He smiled, and didn’t bother to correct her. “So, you’re saying Mystic is holding Oci prisoner in one of these falling down buildings?”
Gyro shrugged. “That’s for you to figure out. Wasn’t I clear that I’d get you to her, and the rest was up to you? Regardless, she is somewhere out there.”
Jeff examined the unending expanse of desert Gyro pointed to beyond the dilapidated ghost town.
“But we aren’t to her yet.” Jeff held his hands up and spun in a circle. “I think your internal compass is broken, Gyro.”
The occupants of the other car joined the group.
Sarah squinted at the decrepit shell of an old tavern. “Gyro, I don’t understand how this ability of yours works. How do you know this is the place?”
Before he had a chance to respond, Jeff noticed a lone figure walking toward them. He could see it was a female, but the waves of heat rising off the ground combined with her distance from them obscured his ability to identify her. He pointed.
“It’s Oceanus,” Set said in a choked voice.
Jeff stepped toward the approaching girl. As soon as he had clearly identified her, he broke into a run, ignoring the calls of caution behind him.
His heart nearly broke a hole in his chest he was so relieved to see her. With super speed, he covered the expanse of desert and swept her into his arms; except his arms remained achingly empty, and he stumbled and splayed flat on the hot ground when he passed right through the hologram. He rolled onto his back and gaped at the image of his girlfriend as it continued toward the group. A series of explosions rocked the ground and sprayed clods of dirt all over him. His ears rang like a bell choir on steroids, and he coughed through the dust as he sprang to his feet to see what happened.
A crater large enough to bury the sedan they’d arrived in had opened in the earth. If Jeff had been a normal super with only normal super speed, they’d be asking for a side of fries to go with the ground meat. He slowly let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding; afraid he’d set off another explosion. He growled, mad at himself for falling for Mystic’s first ploy.
He noticed his parents and Sandra arguing, but couldn’t hear what about. Finally Sarah threw up her hands and turned her back to them. Sandra and Frank levitated about fifteen feet off the ground and then flew to hover over Jeff.
“Arms up,” Frank said.
Sandra and Frank hooked Jeff under the armpits, and raised him into the air. Jeff listed a bit on Sandra’s side.
“Pull your feet up,” she said, strain making her voice thin.
“Don’t you have super strength, Sandra?” Jeff asked, pulling his legs up higher as they threatened to drag along the booby-trapped ground.
“One of my vulnerabilities actually,” Sandra grunted. “Pathetic showing of super strength.”
When they hovered over the group, Sandra let Jeff slip from her grip. The shift in weight pulled him free of Frank’s grasp, and Jeff fell in a heap at Set’s feet. “Hey!” He scowled at his sister.
“You’re heavy,” Sandra said, rubbing her biceps.
Jeff looked up and saw another image approaching. Actually, it was the same Oceanus hologram approaching again.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “I thought Mystic wanted to lure me here, not kill me.”
Chapter 38
“That’s a good point,” Sarah said, giving her husband and daughter the cold shoulder despite a successful retrieval. She scowled, watching the remarkably realistic image of Oceanus approach. “We’ve always assumed you were her ultimate goal.”
“I’ll take care of the mine field,” Set said.
Jeff raised an eyebrow, but Set was already deep in concentration. He’d turned his back on the approaching Oceanus and stared intently to the horizon behind him.
Gyro shielded his eyes and squinted, then ushered his wife toward the car. “Inside with you, Delfina.”
Jeff peered to the horizon. A black expanse of something rolled across the land toward them. The closer it got, the larger it appeared.
Source groaned. “Close your eyes and mouths, everybody.”
A huge cloud of dirt, dust and tumbleweeds bore down on the group. Jeff saw a jackrabbit and what might have been a gas can tumble along within the mass. He and the members of the group fell to their knees, tucking chins and pulling shirts over their faces. Set sent the howling melee barreling into and through the image of Oceanus. Uprooted cactus, sagebrush and other desert litter tripped across the minefield. Explosion after explosion rocked the ground and deafened Jeff.
Whisper clasped her hands over her ears and she rocked back and forth, her face contorted in pain. Jeff realized the cacophony must be ultra-loud in her head. He crawled over to where she kneeled. Bending his long body over her, he wrapped his arms around her, hoping to provide an extra barrier against the noise to ease her suffering. She burrowed her head against his chest, and he drew her as close as possible. He felt some of
her tension ease.
At last, the winds stopped whipping sand against Jeff’s back, and he dared to peek at his surroundings. Set brushed dirt from his clothes, looking disgusted about having to get dirty. Sarah allowed Don to help her up. Frank shook sand from his hair. Source leaned directly into Sandra’s ear to say something, but she still shook her head and shrugged. Whisper looked dazed, but squeezed Jeff’s hand before standing to shake off the layer of sand.
“That was spectacular,” Edmond shouted.
Jeff grimaced at the pleased expression on Set’s face.
Gyro helped his wife out of the car. They were the only ones in the group that didn’t resemble a sand sculpture.
Jeff examined the newly pocked terrain. It looked like a war zone. He shouted that he’d go first, but doubted anyone heard him, since he’d barely heard himself. With a broad wave of his hand he started walking down the unstable sides of newly formed craters. Some were even shoulder deep. He dug his fingers and feet into the soft dirt to climb back out the other side. Whenever possible, he skirted around the holes, but mostly had to plod through the deep sand until his thighs burned from the exertion. He checked over his shoulder to make sure the group followed. All but Gyro and Delfina had. Jeff stopped and stared at the imprinter and his guide. Gyro pointed across the torn up terrain and nodded, then mouthed, or maybe spoke aloud, “Careful.”
With a salute, Jeff turned and continued to trudge up and down the dunes. The landscape stretched out empty and desolate to the horizon. Jeff had no idea where he headed, or how he would know when he reached it, but he knew he was in the right place. Feeling lightheaded from the early stages of heat exhaustion, Jeff worried he might have led his family and friends to their death. They couldn’t continue in this weather without water.
Frank crash-landed in a dune to Jeff’s left. Jeff trudged to a halt next to him. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” With a hand on his back, Frank pushed to a stand. “I’ve been trying to get your attention, but apparently you couldn’t hear me.”
“No, sorry. I think my ears are still ringing from all the explosions.”
Frank gave Jeff a disgruntled look, though Jeff wasn’t sure if it was because he hadn’t heard his dad or because he’d just apologized.
Frank gestured around them. “You got a plan?”
Jeff scanned the horizon again, but all he saw was where the wavy tan earth met with the clear blue skies. He ran a hand through his sweaty hair and finally made eye contact with his dad. “Nope.”
“Son, you need a plan.”
Jeff squinted. “You never have a plan.”
“That’s not true. I just make it look like I never have a plan. It’s all a part of the laid back image. But I always have one.”
Jeff held his hands in the air and then slapped them on his thighs. “Where am I supposed to get one now? Was I seriously supposed to make a plan when Gyro dropped us in the middle of nowhere? Before or after I saw Oceanus? Because if I’d bothered to make a plan before seeing that, I would have had to come up with something new afterward, anyway.”
“Calm down, Polar,” Frank said.
“Stop chilling me, Dad.”
Frank raised an eyebrow.
“Unless you can do it with some sort of wa…” Jeff looked at the ground. His gaze swept to his left and then to his right. “Something’s wrong.”
Frank frowned, his eyes also sweeping the ground and occasionally darting toward Jeff. “What do you mean?”
“Can’t you feel that?” Jeff asked. “The earth is vibrating.”
Frank and Jeff saw the herd of pronghorn crest a rise at the same time. Hundreds of animals stampeded directly toward them. Lithe, nimble bodies leapt and dashed in a mile wide wall of panic-stricken, spike-horned animals.
Eyeing the enormity of the drove, Jeff’s expression matched those of the herd. “What do we do?”
“Fly!” Frank yelled. He and Sandra shot up off the ground and out of reach of the advancing pronghorns.
“Can’t!” Jeff said. He spun toward the rest of the group and yelled. “Hurry, get behind me. Get closer!”
Source stumbled awkwardly over the uneven terrain, far behind the rest of the able-bodied supers. Sarah and Don followed just behind Set, who approached at a decent pace.
Jeff hoped they’d make it in time, because he didn’t know how much energy he had left in him after trudging through the sand. He dug his feet as deep as he could into the soft ground and reached out with his powers. He sent them forward, moving underground from dirt ball to clump of sand. He pushed as hard as he could, and hoped it wasn’t so hard it would send it scattering in all directions like a power explosion. Concentrating hard on keeping his power together as it moved through individual elements, his brow broke out in a sweat, which sapped him of precious strength he needed in order to accomplish what he hoped to accomplish. He held his power at the surface of the ground about one hundred feet in front of them. While he waited for the approaching stampede, he shaped his power like the point of an arrowhead, with the tip pointing to the center of the frightened herd.
His energy flagged, and he felt the point of his power weaken and threaten to dissipate. He pulled the power in closer to them until it wasn’t as difficult to maintain the shape. Now he had longer to wait before the herd got close enough for him to enact his plan. Would he be able to hold out? Would he have enough energy to follow through? He desperately needed water.
The vibration of pounding hoofs finally crashed into his line of energy. Digging his feet in deeper to the earth in order to borrow as much natural energy as possible, Jeff shot his energy straight upward, sending a wall of dirt into the air. He dropped to his knees from the effort, but maintained his energies upward from the ground ahead of their group. A wall of dirt and sand and brush blasted straight to the sky in front of the animals. Though they could have burst right through it, they shied away and changed course. Some animals ran to the left and others to the right. The pointed dirt wall split the herd down the middle and the animals swung around them.
Jeff fell forward on all fours. The extra contact of his hands to ground helped him to reroute some of the earth’s energy into his dirt wall, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep it up much longer. He hoped his companions were all close enough to be out of the path of the herd when they swung back together after they passed the wall.
He could still feel the pounding of hooves vibrating against the front-most point of his power, but the wall was collapsing. Jeff buried his hands in the ground, but barely felt an increase in power. He couldn’t let the point collapse until the entire herd passed. He shifted power toward the point and let the outer most edges of the wall on both sides collapse, praying that Source had managed to stumble close enough to be protected.
Jeff felt hands grip his shoulders and a burst of energy flowed through him. He had no idea who it was or how they could transfer energy to him, but it was enough to fortify the walls. Borrowed energy was fragile; Jeff felt like he was being powered by a generator that was low on gas, but as long as he could siphon it, he would. At last, the vibrations stopped pushing up against the point of the wall, and Jeff was able to shift power back along the sides, funneling the pronghorns around the knot of supers like they were aerodynamic. He let the middle collapse completely, and no longer had to borrow energy in order to keep the walls up alongside them. After all hoof beats faded, Jeff crumbled onto the sand into blissful oblivion.
Chapter 39
“If he doesn’t wipe that perverted grin off his face, I will,” Set said.
“He’s coming to,” Whisper said.
Jeff wasn’t ready to let go of Oceanus, but she faded fast. Her clear bell tone laugh echoed as it dissipated in his memory. He still had his eyes closed, but became aware of his sunbaked skin in direct opposition to the coolness of nighttime in his dream. His healthy, spry dream-self quickly deteriorated into sore muscles and a pounding headache, yet his throat was blessedly moist, and he felt th
e stirrings of his ice deep down in his lungs. In his dream, Oci had been teasing him and occasionally tipping water from a goblet into his mouth. Sometimes he’d drink, other times he’d choke on a laugh and sputter his sip more than swallow it, but the feel of his head in her lap and her hand pressed against the back of his head as she lifted it to offer a sip nearly undid him. He missed the feel of her more than anything. Her tiny hand cradled securely in his, her sliver of an arm twined around his waist, the barely-there weight of her head tucked next to his breastbone. She was so slight, he hardly felt her, but her absence left him feeling exposed and vulnerable and lonely.
“Jeff,” Sandra whispered.
Swallowing the sob lodged in his throat, Jeff chased his dream away and forced his heavy eyelids open. Don, Source, Sarah and Frank stood over him. Set stood away from the group, staring off to the horizon. Whisper and Sandra kneeled at his side, a sneaker clutched in Sandra’s hand. Jeff squinted at the shoe and then at Edmond Hammond, who lay next to him with an arm thrown over his eyes.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Sandra said. She collapsed in relief, her head falling with a plop onto his stomach.
“Don’t spill!” Sarah cried.
“I won’t. I won’t,” Sandra replied. She sat up again, assured that the sneaker was level, and smiled at Jeff. “You really gave us a scare, bro.”
“I told you he was fine,” Whisper mumbled, staring at the ground.
Blinking at the shoe, Jeff realized it was dripping. “Tell me you did not give me water out of that thing.”
Sandra rolled her eyes. “Whatever. You’re welcome!”
“What am I welcome for?” Jeff smacked his tongue against his mouth and was sure he tasted dirty gym socks.
“Saving your life!” she said. “Well, actually, it was mostly Don.”
Jeff looked straight upward at the big man with the smug expression looming over him. Was he posing?
“I think I’d rather take the credit on this one,” Sarah said.
Jeff raised an eyebrow at his mother’s disgusted tone.