First Team

by Robbie MacNiven

  Xodus stood over them, a pistol in one hand. He’d discharged into the air. Now, in the shocked silence that followed, he spoke.

  “Be silent, sinners!” the golden-faced giant roared. His voice came out booming and edged with static. Vic assumed he had some sort of speaker unit implanted into his leering mask.

  “Stand and behold the judgment of the righteous!” he continued, his brazen words echoing up the leafy lane. “Long has this sentence been overdue! Long have you thought yourselves beyond the reach of the Purifiers! But no more! There is no place on this earth or the next that is not subject to our vigilance!”

  It sounded like the same demented rambling that Vic had heard whenever the cult leader was on TV. What he said next though, wasn’t, and it horrified Vic just as much as the sound of the gunshot had. As the police sergeant tried to shout him down, Xodus carried on over him.

  “While the punishment that awaits each and every one of you should be severe, you may yet rejoice in our benevolent mercies. We have come for just one, a devious and deformed creature that you have suffered to live among you for too long. We are here seeking the Anole!”

  A fresh surge of rage filled Vic. It was just what he’d been afraid of. This was all his fault. His parents, his neighborhood, were suffering because of him. Angry muttering and a few shouts issued from the crowd.

  After pausing, Xodus continued. “Tell us where to find the mutant boy, or his punishment shall befall you instead!”

  The crowd didn’t answer, but Dan did. Glaring up at Xodus, he spat. “My son’s name is Victor.”

  The Purifier standing over him struck him on the back of the head. Vic shivered. His hands clenched into fists. Don’t. Not yet. Don’t, or good people will die.

  “If you wish your neighborhood to remain whole you will answer me,” Xodus barked. “We know the mutant is here! Speak, or you shall never see these two again!”

  He brandished his weapon at Dan and Martha.

  “You can’t bully us into submission, you lunatic,” Martha said, looking up for the first time. Her face was streaked with tears, but her expression was filled with defiance. “You’ll never take away my son!”

  The crowd growled with agreement. Mrs Rasheed forced her way into the police cordon, gesturing at Xodus. “You speak about judgment, but your time is coming too, you mindless monster! You won’t catch the kid, and if you hurt his parents, he’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth!”

  “I can only hope so,” Xodus said. “The parents will be coming with us, but not before the filthy taint of this mutant-loving family is burnt from this sinful town!”

  He gestured sharply at the two Purifiers carrying the torches. They moved inside the house while the rest continued to hold the crowd at bay.

  It was now or never. Vic moved. He didn’t head towards the yard though. He went in the opposite direction, slowly, glancing left and right to ensure he remained unnoticed. He had a plan, and he’d only get one shot at it.

  Victor Borkowski had a number of unique abilities, but none of them were particularly suited to aggression. As of yet he’d never found himself to be notably strong or resilient. He had good reflexes, and his biology meant he tired at a slower rate than most humans. His finest attributes were his chameleon skin, his wall-climbing, and his wicked tongue, and all of those were best used covertly. So, Vic went covert. He slipped to the side of the lane, entering the undergrowth, and pulled his hoodie up over his head. Tying the sleeves around his waist, he took a deep, steadying breath, exhaled slowly, and let his skin change. His exposed upper half melded with the surrounding foliage, becoming nothing more recognizable than a moving distortion.

  He crept through the brush, keeping low, almost invisible from the road. The crowd had started to shout again, though he couldn’t see what the Purifiers were doing. His heart was racing and his palms had turned sticky, a sure sign of stress. He had to keep it together, just for a bit longer.

  He passed the first of the Purifier trucks parked up at the side of the road. The small group of zealots guarding them were all on the opposite side, facing the crowd. If there was any trouble, surely it would come from there? Even if one of them had glanced back, they’d have seen nothing to raise suspicions – Vic was too deep in the undergrowth.

  He came to the third vehicle in the Purifier convoy, the old prison truck. Its white-painted bodywork was rusting and dented, but the bars over its rear windows looked freshly soldered. He guessed the cult had salvaged it from a wrecking shop and done it up.

  Vic crept up to its flank, going on all fours now. Like the other two vehicles, there was a Purifier sitting in the prison truck’s cab. And like everyone else on the lane except Victor, the driver’s attention appeared to be focused on the Borkowski front yard. Vic could still hear Xodus haranguing the crowd, presumably while his goons set fire to his home. He couldn’t stop that now. But he could still break his parents out. He reached the side of the truck and, after a slight pause, stood up and knocked once on the driver’s window.

  The Purifier turned sharply. As he did so Vic closed his eyes and held his breath. It was incredibly counter-intuitive, but he kept his nerve, trusting in the fact that the truck driver couldn’t see his clothed lower half through the cab window.

  There was the thunk of a lock disengaging, followed by the sound of the driver’s door opening. Vic opened his eyes and lashed out, grabbing the edge of the door and hauling on it. With the driver holding it from the other side he was dragged out almost on top of Vic, letting out a muffled yelp as he lost his balance.

  Vic sidestepped so that the Purifier fell into the undergrowth by the road. Immediately he dropped on top of him, pinning him as he tried to roll over.

  This was when his reflexes counted. He ripped off the silver grotesque and slammed his fist down into the shocked, cringing face beneath. The man was rake-thin and balding, his skin a sallow, unhealthy color. He tried to cry out as Vic swung at him, as if he still couldn’t make out what was attacking him. The next punch burst his nose in a flash of crimson.

  Vic grabbed the edge of the Purifier’s cowl and half-dragged him up onto his feet. The man lashed out in dazed desperation, catching Vic a glancing blow on the side of the head, but his bony skull carapace took the worst of it. Jaw clenched with rage and effort, Vic thrust the Purifier head-first into the trunk of a tree standing by the road.

  There was a gristly thump. The Purifier went limp, slumping against the tree’s roots. Vic knelt beside him and rolled him over to check he wasn’t faking. The Purifier’s breathing was still steady. Vic glanced quickly back toward the lane. A part of him expected to see a dozen Purifiers rushing him, weapons raised. Instead, he saw that the cultists guarding the truck still had their backs to him and their rifles trained on the crowd. The throaty grumble of the trucks’ idling engines seemed to have covered the noise of the scuffle, and the sounds from the yard had helped. There were still raised voices, angry shouting, and Xodus’s hateful diatribe continuing to boom out. The madman could talk, that was for sure.

  Be quick. Don’t hesitate. Vic reached down and hauled the black robes up and off the Purifier. It wasn’t an easy task, manhandling the thick folds over the unconscious body, but Vic’s frustration gave him a fevered determination. He managed to drag them over the man’s head, leaving him in his undergarments – a worn set of combat pants and a stained vest that clung to his rangy body.

  Vic hefted the robes over his own head. For a moment he was trapped in suffocating black folds that stank nauseatingly of stale sweat and body odor. He managed to battle his way to the hood, coming up gasping as the garment fell over his shoulders.

  He found himself looking down at the white Purifier badge now stamped upon his chest. It filled him with skin-crawling revulsion, but there was no time for squeamishness. A series of gun shots echoed out across the lane. Vic looked over the hood of the truck in time to see one of th
e Purifiers letting off another burst of fire into the air. Xodus was advancing, the crowd and the police scattering. Cussing again, Vic cast about on the ground until he’d found the fallen Purifier’s grotesque. He fitted the ugly thing over his head and immediately found his world constricting to its narrow eye slits, his own breathing quickly growing heavy in the stifling confines of the mask.

  Almost as an afterthought, he heaved the unconscious body of the Purifier a few feet deeper into the undergrowth, before sprinting, head down, back to the prison truck. He had to hike up the ungainly skirt of the robes with both hands as he went. How did these idiots stand wearing this stuff full-time? They’d need more than divine intervention if any of them ever found themselves having to run somewhere.

  He hit the side of the van and threw himself into the driver’s seat, easing the door shut just as Xodus and his underlings crossed the street towards the parked-up vehicles. The crowd had been forced to scatter, the police begging the Borkowskis’ neighbors to keep clear. Even with a phalanx of armed and aggressive zealots advancing through their midst, none of the residents backed off more than a few paces. There was booing and jeering as Xodus reached the first of the transport trucks.

  They’d brought Dan and Martha with them. Both had been cuffed with zip wires and were being dragged along at gunpoint. Dan’s expression was stony, his gaze unwavering as he stared straight ahead, but Martha couldn’t resist looking back at the house as she was forced along. Black smoke had begun to billow from the bottom floor windows.

  Vic forced himself to sit still and be silent. Remember the training. Just a bit closer. The robe and mask stank, and he was starting to get a headache, a sure sign that he was overheating. He needed to regulate his temperature, but he didn’t even dare play around with the air con. He couldn’t risk discovery, not now there were Purifiers actually passing the truck’s cab. He experienced a flash of pure panic as he placed his hands on the steering wheel and remembered that they were still uncovered – the Purifier he’d taken out hadn’t been wearing gloves. Green, scaly, clawed fingers might be a bit of a giveaway. He hastily triggered his chameleon effect on the visible skin and dropped his hands into his lap.

  Xodus had mounted up in the front of the lead truck. More Purifiers were clambering into the open flatbed directly ahead of Vic, while several others led Dan and Martha past his own window, headed for the rear of the prison van. Vic fought the hardest battle of his life to ignore his parents while they were pulled past him. Still struggling to stay calm, he turned in his seat and looked back through the barred window between the truck cab and the containment trailer. A Purifier swung the rear doors open, and as he did so Vic put the gearstick into reverse, foot poised over the accelerator.

  There were some barked commands, and Dan was thrust up by his captor into the back of the trailer. Martha followed immediately after. The second Vic saw her pushed up into the vehicle, he hit the gas. The engine roared to life with a violent jolt, sharp enough to fling both his parents from their feet and deeper into the trailer. It also flung off the Purifier who’d been about to clamber up after them, sending the rest scattering.

  “Hang on!” was all Vic had time to shout. He slammed the shift into gear and dragged hard on the wheel. Tires shrieked and the engine protested as the truck made an ungainly turn in the lane, throwing aside more Purifiers like black-clad rag dolls.

  The street descended into chaos. Residents fled in all directions, screaming as the police tried to get to their own cars. The Purifiers immediately ahead of Vic threw themselves out of the way, while those who’d mounted up in the other trucks leapt back onto the road, shouting and fumbling with their weapons. Vic urged the prison truck past the other cult vehicles and the police cars blocking the narrow lane. To do so he had to half drive on the verge – twigs and branches whipped at the cab as he wrestled the transport around and back onto the road, silently thankful that an evasive driving course was part of the Institute’s educational program.

  One of the Purifiers opened fire. A semiautomatic burst of shots perforated the cabin, clipping the hood and crunching through the glass of both doors, leaving them cracked and crazed. Another cultist actually attempted to fling himself into the path of the careening truck. Vic clipped him with a thud, flinging the madman into the undergrowth.

  He was past the police cars. The road ahead was clear. Vic accelerated.

  “Hold on!” he shouted again, snatching a glance into the trailer compartment. He could only hope the desperate driving hadn’t thrown his parents back out of the rear door. Dan had managed to catch hold of one of the window rungs, clutching onto them with his wrists still bound. Martha had in turn grabbed him to steady herself.

  “What’re you doing?” Dan shouted.

  “Getting us out of here!” Vic replied. He pushed the grotesque back so it was on top of his head rather than over his face – handling a rusting old prison truck at speed was somewhat easier when he could both see and breathe.

  He glanced in his wing mirrors and swore. They already had company. One of the Purifier vehicles was racing after them, coming up rapidly. He eased his foot down, taking the turn at the end of the lane as fast as he dared.

  Downtown Fairbury lay ahead, its quiet Sunday afternoon about to be shattered. Vic shot through the red light at the first junction, hunched over the steering wheel, his concentration absolute. He could carry on straight through town, but he doubted he’d be able to lose their pursuers that way. He took a hard left at the next junction, teeth gritted as he battled the wheel once more, feeling gravity attempting to overturn the swerving truck. He could smell rubber burning as he took an immediate right, then left again, having to drag the vehicle around parked cars on a one-way street.

  “You have to slow down, Vic!” Martha shouted. “You’re going to hit something!”

  Vic didn’t have time to respond. Another red light, horns blaring at him furiously. Pedestrians and other vehicles just a blur. His attention was split entirely between the road directly ahead and the view in the mirrors. The Purifiers were sticking to him. They’d lost ground, but they were still in sight.

  He didn’t have a plan. Snatch the truck while his parents were in the back, that was as far as he’d gotten. He’d hoped the Purifiers would be slower to pursue, or that the police would at least impede them. They were relentless though. What should he do? Carry on out of town, pick up the highway? Dump the truck and head out on foot? Try and hide somewhere in town?

  “Victor!” screamed his mother. He saw the danger in the same instant. An elderly couple had stepped out onto a pedestrian crossing directly ahead. They froze in terror as they saw the truck tearing towards them.

  Vic wrenched the wheel to the left. Too late. The vehicle shrieked as it passed the couple, but in doing so Vic had lost control. Momentum carried it over. In that last instant, Vic realized he hadn’t fastened his seatbelt.

  The world went sideways. Vic was thrown across the driver compartment, his head crunching into the windshield. The impact was a visceral feeling, that hideous moment of force instantly followed by a lance of raw pain. Stars burst across his vision, and he tasted blood. He stopped thinking.

  Glass rained down around him. Glass, and something else. Water. He didn’t understand. Was it raining? His head hurt. A detached part of his mind realized that he was probably in shock, or stunned, or both. He blinked, wiping water from his eyes. Not water, blood. There was water too though, pattering down through the shattered windshield.

  He groaned and tried to sit up, discovering as he did so that “up” had changed substantially. The cab was on its side, its right flank tipped in the air. After hitting the windshield Vic had been dumped down onto the crumpled remains of the driver’s door, now crushed against the sidewalk.

  He stretched out tentatively, expecting to find broken bones and torn muscles, but the only pain was in his scalp. He probed it delicately with one finger,
finding it bloody and stinging. He’d taken worse knocks in the danger room though – his skull carapace had saved him from splitting his head open.

  Water still fell from outside, running in through the shattered windshield. He realized where it was coming from. The truck had mounted the sidewalk as it overturned and had collided with a red fire hydrant. Water jetted vertically from the broken spout and rained back down, pattering steadily off the crumpled hood.

  The distant shriek of tires reached him. He snapped fully back to the present, his dazed thoughts rallying. His parents. He had to get out. Now. He vaulted up through the shattered window of the right-hand cab door, landing on the sidewalk outside. It was slick from the burst hydrant. There were no pedestrians nearby. Everyone had scattered from the site of the crash including, he was relieved to notice, the elderly couple.

  He found his parents around the back of the truck. Dan had crawled from the open rear doors, pulling Martha along with him. They were slumped side-by-side against the vehicle. Martha had a head gash not dissimilar to Vic’s, and Dan was clutching his ankle, in obvious pain.

  “Get your mother out,” he said as Vic crouched beside them. “My ankle’s gone. I’ll only slow you down.”

  “No,” Vic said, putting his arm around Martha’s shoulder. She seemed dazed. Vic hoped she wasn’t concussed. “We’re all going. Come on.”

  “There’s no time,” Dan snapped. “I can barely stand, let alone run. I’m telling you, get her out! I’ll be fine!”

  Vic helped Martha to her feet. She looked at him un­comprehendingly, still clutching her bloody scalp, confused.

  “Victor?” she mumbled. “What’s happening?”

  “Everything’s going to be all right,” he lied. “You’ve just got to walk with me, OK Mom?”