Joshua Dread

by Lee Bacon

A massive explosion shot from my fingertips. It knocked the leg loose from the rest of the robot’s body and sent me flying in the other direction.

  When I hit the ground, I skidded across the concrete like it was a skating rink. My arms and legs stung with cuts and bruises. There were other things to worry about, though. I might’ve detached one of the Romper’s legs, but it still had five others. Not to mention a set of deadly teeth and a butt that could burn down an entire city block.

  Milton was staring at me in complete shock.

  “You just … But how did you … Explosion …”

  “The thing is,” I began, “I kind of have a … superpower.”

  If it was possible, Milton looked even more dumbfounded. “What kind of superpower?”

  I took a deep breath. “Spontaneous combustion.”

  “Spontaneous huh?”

  “I’ll explain later. Is Sophie okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Sophie was climbing to her feet. “Thanks for … you know—that.” She gestured to the charred robot leg lying on the ground.

  “No problem,” I said.

  “And about earlier, I’m sorry that I—”

  I shook my head. “Nah. I’m the one who was acting weird. It’s just that—”

  “I’m glad you guys are working things out,” Milton interrupted. “But can we talk about it later?”

  He pointed. The first giant robot was still headed our way. And the second was rising out of the ground, despite the missing leg. A couple more seconds and there’d be no escaping them.

  “We need to get to the football field,” Sophie said.

  We took off running, the Rompers trailing behind us, their legs thwacking against the pavement.

  “Maybe this is a bad time,” Milton panted, “but is there a reason why enormous robotic insects are chasing us?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “And what about that explosion back there? I still don’t get how you—”

  We skidded to a stop when another earth-rumbling quake rattled beneath us. The ground opened up a few feet away. A third Romper was climbing out of the concrete.

  “There are too many!” Sophie yelled. “We’ll never outrun them. We’ve got to try something else.”

  “Like what?”

  Sophie turned to me, her face pale. “If we get separated, I’ll meet you in the center of the football field. And if one of those things attacks while I’m gone, try not to get too close to its teeth. But don’t get behind it either. Because—you know—the fire.”

  “So stay away from both sides. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Exactly.” She nodded with a determined expression, her jaw set. “I’ll be right back.” Then Sophie took off running back in the direction we’d come from—back toward the Romper that was chasing us.

  I watched her, my heart pounding with fear. That thing would tear Sophie apart—if it didn’t burn her to a crisp first. I couldn’t let her face it alone.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said to Milton.

  “Oh, no,” Milton said. “Not you too.”

  “Just stay here.”

  And then I was running, chasing after Sophie. She’d nearly reached the Romper when I noticed something about her. Something different.

  She was … glowing.

  14

  Every Gyft is unique in its own way.

  Sophie had said that her Gyft came with a side effect. I guess this was what she’d meant.

  The glow that radiated from her skin was bright, almost blinding. Looking at her was like looking at a lightbulb.

  The Romper slid to a halt and pointed its rear end at Sophie. A fireball came blasting in her direction. If it had been me, I would’ve been roasted like a marshmallow, but Sophie whipped under the flame and grabbed hold of the robot’s leg. The robot let out a surprised electronic yelp as she yanked the leg loose and plunged it into the Romper’s body like a spear.

  I couldn’t believe what I’d just witnessed. Sophie had told me she had superhuman strength, but this was way beyond anything I’d ever imagined. By the time I caught up with her, she was shining so brightly that it hurt my eyes even to look at her. And yet I couldn’t look away.

  “I must look pretty strange.” Her voice sounded shaky. “It only happens whenever I use my Gyft. But … I don’t usually let other people see.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Really. I was just sort of—”

  “Surprised to see that your project partner is the Incredible Hulk?”

  “Well, technically, the Incredible Hulk is green,” I pointed out. “You’re more like the Incredible Lightning Bug.”

  Sophie shot me an angry glance as a scream ripped out across the street.

  “Heeeeelllllp!”

  Milton was dashing around a telephone pole, trailed by a Romper. The robot shot a burst of fire and the pole erupted into flames.

  Sophie and I raced toward him. The Romper had Milton cornered against a parked car. Snapping its steel jaws, it took a bite out of Milton’s backpack. The Romper was going in for the second course when Sophie reached out with both glowing hands and snapped the thing’s head from its body like it was an oversized doll.

  The headless Romper swayed for a moment, let out a final puff of fire from its backside, and then collapsed.

  “Are you okay?” Sophie asked Milton.

  He looked at us with large, wet eyes. Broken pieces of metal and concrete were stuck to his hair. He spoke in a droopy, faraway voice.

  “I. Just. Wanted. Curly. Fries.”

  He definitely sounded a little shaken up, but I figured he’d recover.

  Milton nudged me with his elbow. “Is she … glowing?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay.” He sounded relieved. “At least you can see it too.”

  “Come on,” Sophie said. “We’ve got to get to that football field.”

  “Why?” I asked. The concrete shook. More Rompers were rising from the ground all around us.

  “That’s where Stanley’s picking us up.”

  “Who’s Stanley?”

  “Our ride.”

  We sprinted across the parking lot, dodging rising Rompers.

  “Just out of curiosity,” Milton said, breathing heavily as he ran, “what happened back there? ’Cause it looked like you”—he turned to me—“created an explosion out of midair. And you”—he told Sophie—“just ripped the head off a killer robot insect?”

  Sophie’s only response was to point out a section of the parking lot ahead of us where a Romper was rising from the ground. Without slowing down, she swung her foot and kicked the thing’s head clear off its body.

  “Am I the only one here without a superpower?” Milton asked.

  We kept running. The field was getting closer. The entrance was locked shut, but I figured we’d deal with that when we got there. Firebottomed Rompers clawed across the parking lot, closing in on us.

  On the gate at the entrance to the field, a sign read:

  NO ENTRY WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION

  “I’ll take care of this,” I said.

  Grabbing hold of the lock, I closed my eyes and attempted to block out all sound. My concentration evaporated when Sophie’s voice broke in.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to help?” she asked.

  “Just give me a second,” I said. “I can do it.” I wanted to prove that I could—to her, and to myself.

  I closed my eyes again as a feeling came over me—strange and familiar at the same time. A tingling in my fingers. Heart pounding. All of a sudden, the lock in my hand felt like a pot of boiling water, but I kept a firm grip until I heard the sound of exploding metal. The lock burst apart, and the gate swung open.

  We pushed through the entryway and kept running, passing beneath the bleachers and emerging onto the football field. Behind me, I heard a sound that caused a shiver of fear to run down my spine. The Rompers had torn through the fence. They were charging the field behind us.

  “Are you
sure your ride’s gonna make it?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Stanley will come.”

  “Did he say when he was planning to show up?” Milton glanced back nervously as the first of the Rompers stepped onto the field.

  “There he is!” Sophie exclaimed, pointing up.

  Above us, a black hover SUV was descending toward the center of the field. A pile of loose grass and dust swept up around the sides of the SUV as it came to rest on the ground.

  We took off running again. The sound of the Rompers trailed behind us, their sharp legs and flaming butts turning the football field into a disaster zone.

  The doors of the hover SUV swung open. Milton was the first inside. Then Sophie. I dove in after her, landing on top of them both. The door closed behind me. An instant later, a Romper crashed against the outside of the SUV. There was a dull thud, but the SUV remained in one piece.

  “Don’t worry,” Sophie said. “The car is titanium reinforced and armor plated. Nothing’s getting through.”

  She was right. The SUV shook a little, but that was all the Rompers could do. It was like going through the automatic car wash. Except instead of soapy rags and brushes, our car was surrounded by bursts of flame and sharp metallic legs.

  Something moved in the front seat. My heart leaped into my throat as I realized that one of the robots had made it into the SUV.

  “Good afternoon, children.”

  It took me another split second to realize what was happening. The thing in the front seat was a robot, but not the kind that had attacked us. It had a silver humanlike face, and bulging eyes the color of pearls. It was wearing a chauffeur’s hat and a black suit.

  “Guys,” Sophie said, “this is Stanley. My butler, driver, and bodyguard. All rolled into one.”

  It was my first time meeting a robotic butler/driver/bodyguard, and I wasn’t sure quite how to act.

  “Um … hi,” I said.

  “Yo.” Milton saluted.

  The SUV continued rocking back and forth from the impact of the Rompers outside.

  “Thanks for coming on such short notice, Stanley,” Sophie said. Her skin was already losing its glow. “We need to go someplace where those things won’t be able to attack us. Someplace secure.” She hesitated, then said, “Take us back to the house, Stanley.”

  “Very well, Miss Justice.”

  “Did he just call you … ‘Miss Justice’?” Milton looked from Sophie to Stanley and back again. I could see the pieces coming together in his mind. All the gossip we’d heard from the Cafeteria Girls, the superpower, the titanium-walled vehicle. “Does that mean you’re …?”

  Sophie nodded.

  “And that your dad is …?”

  Sophie nodded again.

  “And we’re about to …?”

  Sophie kept on nodding.

  Milton’s eyes went wide. All the Captain Justice trading cards he carried around with him, the Captain Justice sheets on his bed, the copies of Super Scoop with Captain Justice’s face plastered across the cover. And now he was sharing a hover SUV with the superhero’s daughter.

  It was his dream come true.

  I wasn’t quite so excited. As flames blossomed against the fireproof windows, I thought about all the things my parents had said about Captain Justice. That he was a know-nothing do-gooder. A corporate sellout. A mortal enemy.

  And now we were on our way to his house.

  15

  Captain Justice has ranked at the top of the Annual List of Highest-Paid Superheroes eight years in a row. During his career, he’s shown that he is willing to endorse just about any product that will pay him.

  If you ignored the robot driver and the fact that we were flying a thousand feet above the ground, the hover SUV looked like the inside of pretty much any other car.

  Milton was leaning forward in his seat, talking excitedly to Stanley about what it was like to work for Captain Justice. By now, Sophie had returned to her normal non-glowing self.

  “What was that back there?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sophie said. “I’ve never seen anything like them before. My guess is they were sent by the Dread Duo. Probably trying to get back at my dad for what happened a few weeks ago.”

  “You don’t know that,” I blurted out.

  Sophie gave me a surprised look. “Dr. Dread is an inventor. He probably built those things and programmed them to attack me. You know, as revenge or something.”

  “All I’m saying is that we shouldn’t just assume it was the Dread Duo.”

  “And I’m just saying it would make sense if it was the Dread Duo. They’ve been trying to kill my dad for at least the last ten years.”

  “Well … I bet they had their reasons,” I said in a voice that was sharper than I’d intended. I knew I should have just left it alone, but I could feel defensiveness flaring up inside me. “Anyway, it’s not like your dad never tried to kill the Dread Duo.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  All of a sudden, I couldn’t stand looking at Sophie. Just because my parents were supervillains, and just because they sometimes tried to destroy the world—that didn’t mean she had to go around blaming them for everything bad that happened.

  Anyway, I knew the Firebottomed Rompers hadn’t been there for Sophie. The logo on the side meant that there had to be some connection to the smoke creatures. But who was behind all this?

  When Milton was done talking with Stanley, he turned around in his seat and gave me a long look.

  “So you’ve got a superpower, huh?” he said. “And you never thought to tell me?”

  “I haven’t known for very long,” I said.

  “Uh-huh. But you already told Sophie, right?”

  “Well … yeah.”

  “Interesting.” Milton crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Very interesting.”

  “What?” I could feel my face going red.

  “It just seems like the kind of thing best friends tell each other. I would definitely let you know if I had simultaneous combustion.”

  “Spontaneous combustion.”

  “Whatever.” Milton stared out the window at the passing clouds.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I guess I was embarrassed. I didn’t want you to think I was some kind of freak.”

  Milton scrunched up his face. “Freak? I think it’s awesome you have a superpower! The way you made that Romper’s leg explode … It was probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in real life! Just as long as you’re not keeping any other big secrets I don’t know about.”

  My heart sank. Any other big secrets? Like maybe a fake identity? Parents who tried to destroy the world every couple of months? Did those count as big secrets?

  Sophie’s house appeared from within a cluster of trees below. You couldn’t miss it. The place was enormous. I’d heard the Cafeteria Girls say it was big, but I’d had no idea it was this big. Imagine the largest house you’ve ever seen. Now imagine that someone took five or six of the largest houses you’ve ever seen and attached them together, then surrounded all of it with a moat and then surrounded that with a security wall and a lookout tower armed with machine guns. That might give you some idea of what Sophie’s house looked like.

  “We should be safe from those Rompers here,” Sophie said.

  “Looks like it,” I said.

  In front of us, Stanley pressed a button on the dashboard, and the roof of the garage opened. The hover SUV drifted downward.

  The vehicle came to rest on the floor of the garage. The roof slowly closed above us. Stepping out of the SUV, I looked across the vast space. At home, our garage was a mess of tools and half-assembled gadgets lying around on workbenches, jars of flesh-eating bacteria gathering dust on the shelves, basketballs and bicycles and hover scooters pushed into the corners.

  This garage was a huge space, at least fifty times larger than our garage at home. Dozens of vehicles of all kinds were arranged in rows. Sports cars, luxury sedans, armored tan
ks. I couldn’t believe that they all belonged to one person.

  Parked next to the hover SUV was a red convertible, glistening and new. The license plate read:

  JUSTICE

  We followed Stanley through the garage, between rows of shining vehicles, until we reached a door at the far end of the room. Stanley held out his hand. When it neared the doorknob, a silver key popped out from the end of his finger. He inserted the key into the lock and turned. The door opened.

  “By the way,” Sophie said, “when you see my dad, try not to mention that we almost got killed by giant robotic insect monsters, okay?”

  “Why not?” I asked. “It seems like the kind of thing he might want to know about.”

  “He’s a little obsessed with my safety.”

  I thought back to the moat surrounding the house and the machine guns on the guard towers surrounding the moat. She had a point.

  “If my dad thinks I’m in danger,” she went on, “then we might have to move again.” Her eyes found me in the gloom of the garage. “And I’d kind of like to stay.”

  I followed Sophie through the doorway into a vast marble-tiled room. An oriental rug stretched across the floor at our feet. A staircase curved upward in front of us. The room was bigger than an average house. And this was just the entryway.

  “May I fetch you a refreshing beverage?” Stanley asked.

  “Uh, sure.” Milton glanced over at Sophie, and when she nodded, he turned back to the robot. “That sounds great.”

  “What would you like, sir?”

  “Do you have Dr Pepper?”

  “Affirmative. How many would you like?”

  “Umm … how many can I have?”

  “Please allow me one moment while I compute your request.”

  For a couple of seconds, the only sound coming out of the robot was a low rumble. Milton stared at him, his eyes beaming.

  “A human life-form of your size and weight is capable of consuming 314.65 liquid ounces of Dr Pepper in a two-hour period,” Stanley said. “That equals 26.22 cans. You should be warned that evidence from medical studies has shown that such excessive overconsumption of fructose-based carbonated water could result in severe illness and—”