“Everything else we know to be fact falls under the rubric of public safety. Chief Sullivan has told me of the potential for danger, and that is something we cannot ignore.”
He would have to toss the law in my face. Never mind someone else had started the fights. The law was the law, and if my mother and I sued, it was a sure bet we’d lose. The smoking continued, sending up more second-hand carcinogens. “A line has to be drawn somewhere,” he continued
“And your point is,” I said, knowing what he’d state next. Hell, just tell us the bad news, already. “What is it?”
“I’m going to ask you to pay off your mortgage, all of it.”
My mother’s voice practically cracked with panic. “Mr. Roberts, I’ve been paying off the mortgage as best I can. I’ve done it on a monthly basis, just like the contract says. I’m asking you for more time. That’s all I need.”
He leaned forward, avarice in his eyes. “Much as I feel for you, Mrs. Kessler, you and your unfortunate situation, business is business. If you have the funds to pay off the mortgage, then I’ll forgive the interest accrued on it, but if not...”
He spread his hands as if to say the matter was out of his hands. No, it damn well wasn’t. Roberts’ face wore a bland expression, but his eyes, dark and probing, glittered. He was getting a kick out of all this.
“We don’t have the money right now, Mr. Roberts. Have you foreclosed on anyone else, recently?” my mother asked.
As if by magic, the bland look disappeared. In its place stood a look of cold, ruthless, businesslike practicality. “In fact, I have.”
He reached inside his jacket pocket and withdrew a sheet of paper, waving it in the air. “This list contains no less than thirty people my company has foreclosed on over the past year in and around the Portland area. It’s nothing personal, Mrs. Kessler.”
Oh hell, yes it was, but try getting to his heart on this. He didn’t have one. I wondered what Callie would think, and it put me in a worse mood than before. My mother’s mood though went from despair to rage, something I’d rarely seen. She strode over to the table and slapped her palm on it, the impact of her flesh on the wood sending up a sharp report. “You know this is wrong! My son is doing his best to help out, and you don’t appreciate it.”
Mrs. Thompson, the woman sitting furthest away from the center, spoke up in a high-pitched, squeaky voice. “And we, Mrs. Kessler, don’t appreciate your attitude. I think Mr. Roberts has acted in a gentlemanly matter.”
She then gave a haughty sniff. “In addition to your financial problems—which have nothing to do with us—we feel your presence isn’t a wholesome one for our community.”
Wholesome? Her husband owned a liquor shop and he’d once been fined for selling booze to minors. She had some balls telling us what was right and what wasn’t.
By now, my mother was on the verge of tears, and she stood trembling before the Council members. Roberts delicately balanced his cigar on the edge of the table. “I’m not going to kick you out just yet. I feel bad about you having to move. But the law is the law.
“So, here is how things stand.” He inhaled deeply on his cigar and blew out a plume of bluish-gray smoke. “I’ve rated the property as being worth about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The mortgage is around seventy-five thousand.”
With all the arrogance of a potentate, he leaned back in his chair, balancing a chubby arm on his voluminous gut. He then closed his eyes as if calculating things. “I’ll forgive the six months interest and pay you a hundred thousand, as is.”
There it was, the final offer. A helpless look washed over my mother’s face, and my heart sank. My house, the only home I’d ever known, was going to be taken away. “When do you want us out?” I asked.
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he puffed away on his cigar, blowing a series of perfectly shaped smoke rings at us. “I’m not putting a timetable on it. I know you’ll need time to set things up with social services as well as to find another place to live. I’ll see what I can do. But you do have to move.”
“Where?” I muttered.
“Not our concern,” Mrs. Grayson snapped.
The meeting was over, and my mother and I walked outside without saying another word. “So what do we do now?” I asked.
My mother’s face resembled a stone idol’s, impersonal and unemotional. “Go home and throw out what isn’t needed.” A single tear streamed down the side of her face. “After that, we’ll have to start packing.”
My room seemed emptier than ever. I’d never really thought about it until now. I’d grown up here, spent my summers in the backyard playing catch with Joe, spent the fall raking leaves, spent the winter huddled under the blankets, and spent spring staring out the window and hoping it wouldn’t rain.
As I cleared things away, I took a look at the four wooden walls that held a few faded posters of the hot television actresses I’d fallen for over the years. They were now probably in their late twenties or early thirties. In a sudden burst of fury, I tore them off the walls and crumpled them up.
The rest of the furnishings, my desk, my bed, and closet, soon all of that would be gone. Roberts would probably bulldoze the place and build another house for a family.
Yeah, a family, he’d rent it or sell it to a real family, not one with a gargoyle for a son. My thoughts of how things were and how they should be were interrupted by the sound of the telephone ringing. “I’ll get it,” my mother called up.
A few seconds later, I hear a few words, some sharp exchanges, and then the sound of the receiver being slammed down echoed through the house. This had to be bad news, and I ran down the stairs only to find my mother staring at the phone. She’d cracked the receiver. “What is it?” I asked.
“Mr. Roberts already put the house on the market,” she said in a dead voice. “That was a couple from out of state asking us when we were going to leave. Roberts told them we’d be gone in two weeks.”
So much for his promise of more time, the little scumbag. My mother sat on the couch and buried her head in her hands, her body quivering. I took a seat beside her and put my arm around her shoulder. “Can I do anything?”
She shook her head. “No, no, there’s nothing.” She picked her head up, wiped her eyes, and got up. “I have to go into work. When I come home later on, I’ll do my own packing. If you can do your room and the upstairs rooms, that’s enough.” She took a deep breath. “Will you be okay on your own?”
My mother always asked the same question, and my answer remained the same. “I’ll be fine.”
After giving me a wan smile, she walked out the front door. A few seconds later I heard her drive off and a few seconds after that, someone knocked on the door. Opening it, Joe stood there. “Bad news?” he asked.
“You could say that.”
“So, spill already.”
Reluctantly, I told him about the foreclosure. As I spoke, his expression got progressively grimmer. “Did you call Callie? She might say yes to you living there.”
“No, I didn’t, and what about my mother? It’s not like we can just move in.”
With a nervous finger, he tapped the side of the doorway. “So what are you going to do?”
I’d been thinking of social services. They’d be able to help—maybe. However, their office lay in Portland, they were probably filled to the limit with other cases, and in the meantime, my mother and I needed a place to stay.
Working seemed to be the answer. But what could we do outside of hacking the carnival circuit? Running the idea past Joe, he offered a sad smile. “Screwed is screwed. C’mon, I’ll help you pack. After that, let’s get some lunch.”
With my buddy’s help, we got things crated and boxed in no time at all. I posted up a few online advertisements about some furniture my mother and I no longer needed, and then Joe and I hit the town for lunch. The place we went to had an all-you-can-eat special for twelve dollars, an unbeatable deal. Over a few
ultra-oily burgers that practically slid off my plate along with underdone fries, we tossed around ideas over what could be done.
“You want something else?” the waitress asked.
Squat and dumpy with a round face and an impersonal demeanor, she took our orders for a few more burgers and a couple of refills on our sodas.
This place, Millie’s Side-Car Eats, happened to be one of the few places around that hadn’t kicked us out for being us—yet. While we waited for our food to arrive, my best friend hashed out a plan, something I’d been thinking about. “How about cleaning out the training ground?”
The waitress came by with our food. I listened to Joe’s question while wiping my hands with a handful of napkins, and grimaced as I noticed a few spots of grease had already spattered my shirt. “If you’re serious, we could go there, but we’d also be trespassing. That’s government property, remember?”
Joe finished off his third burger in two seconds, downed his soft drink in half that time, and offered a massive belch that didn’t quite fit with his small size. “Yeah, you’re right, but even so, we could try. My guess is the government’s forgotten about the place. Or maybe they haven’t. I don’t know, but even if they haven’t, they don’t want publicity. Sort of makes sense, doesn’t it?”
For a second, a surge of hope went through me, but exactly one second later, it vanished. “I pushed the self-destruct button. Everything’s destroyed. Besides, the government probably knows about it. They’ll track us down. Even if they don’t, one of those things that attacked us will.”
“So what are you going to do?” Joe countered. He leaned over, his face a few inches away from mine, and for the first time in a very long time, his expression read pissed-off. “You said you have no cash. Me, I can always stay with my father, but...”
He left the question hanging, and really, he didn’t have to say anything else. I was an online high school grad with powers that no one cared for and zero experience. The only thing I could do was to go somewhere with my mother and hope no one would find out who I was. But I knew they would. Inevitably, they would.
A sigh escaped my lips, the sigh of bucking up against overwhelming odds and being overwhelmed by them. I’d grown up here, and now it appeared that I’d have to leave. “Well, let’s go back and see if anyone replied to the ads for the furniture. It’ll be a few extra bucks, right?”
Joe said nothing but pulled some money from his pocket, carefully counted it, and then dropped it on the table. “That’s my lunch money for the next week,” he said sadly, staring at the cash. “My father says I’m eating him out of house and home. From now on I guess dinner’s tuna and broccoli—and I hate tuna.”
“At least it’s cheap. And I like it.”
“You can have mine.”
Checking my computer back at the house, seven people had already replied to my advertisement. That was fast. Six of them were from out of state, but one address was from Salem. “Maybe this person will call,” Joe said.
He sounded hopeful, and right now, hope was all we had. “Maybe he will.”
By chance or fate, the phone rang, and I picked it up. “Hello?”
A youngish-sounding voice answered. “Hi, my name’s Alan Bowman. I’m calling about the furniture you have on sale?”
Was he on the level? Maybe so. “Yes, sir,” I answered.
What to tell him? Joe pointed at the computer screen and at the prices and jerked his thumb upward. I got the message: ask for more. “Uh, most of the people who answered have topped the prices we put down—”
“Price is no object. Name it, and it’s yours.”
This sounded too good to be true, so I named a dollar figure I thought appropriate. “Sold American,” he crowed. “I’ll meet you at this address. Be here in ten minutes.”
Mr. Bowman had named a place downtown. I knew it. “We’ll see you soon.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Things were looking up. Joe smiled. “Let’s go get you some money.”
It didn’t take us long to get to where Mr. Bowman had told us to meet him. The street was crowded with the summer sun worshippers, kids begging their parents to buy them ice cream, young couples strolling together, and seeing them so happy made me long to see Callie, but that would have to wait.
A man in an ill-fitting, overly large suit stood on the corner, swiveling his head left and right as if searching for someone. Short and slight with a hatchet face pockmarked by cuts—probably from shaving—he had a head of thinning black hair, even though he didn’t seem to be much over thirty years of age. When he saw us, he looked up and offered a tentative smile. “Are you Mitch Kessler?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” I answered, recognizing his voice. Putting on my best sales tone, I gestured to Joe. “This is my friend, Joe Chambers. Are you Mr. Bowman?”
He swallowed hard and tugged at his collar, but for what reason, I had no idea. It was already loose. “I am.”
Something funky was happening. The voice was the same, but he didn’t sound like the confident dude I’d spoken to on the telephone. His eyes, beady and small, flicked back and forth like an old pinball machine, and his voice became more guttural with each passing second. “I was... hoping to meet you,” he said, still tugging at his collar. “I was... sent... made...”
Oh hell, it can’t be. This guy doesn’t stink like the others did!
Joe’s eyes bugged out, and he pulled on my arm. “Mitch, back off, this guy’s going to—”
“Kill you both,” Bowman cut in, and that’s when his body exploded through his suit. It wasn’t a human body, though. With the torso of a centipede complete with multiple arms and the legs of an elephant, this sick looking hybrid was something only a weird scientist would dream up. His head also changed shape, from something human to a mix of ape and lion, but with the same beady eyes. “Kill you!” it screamed.
Its inhuman cry was enough to scare the living hell of out of the summertime passersby and they, in turn, shrieked in fear. “Get out of here,” I yelled. “Call the police!”
The sounds of scampering feet indicated people were vacating the area, but the sounds of the monster ten feet away overrode them. Low and guttural, it sounded like a lawnmower mating with a rabid hyena. “Kill you, kill you!”
“Yeah, you already said that,” Joe put in, just before whirling around and knocking the monster back ten feet. “Say something different.”
He spun again, but this time the creature was ready. It smacked him with its arms and Joe got tossed in a high arc thirty feet away through a barbershop window. I ran over to see if he was all right. “Are you okay?”
Face bloody, he nodded wearily, and his answer was pure snark. “I just got tossed through a window. What do you think?”
Point taken. “I’m on it.”
The monster was waiting, so I did the dumbest thing possible—I rushed it head on. Its multiple arms, long, barbed, and fast-moving, grabbed me and a shock ran through my body.
“That’s electricity. You’re in my chair. You got that?”
Surprised it could actually say something more than, “Kill you,” and I concentrated on adapting to the power surging through me. My senses began to short out, but something inside me, a desire to live and perhaps better genetic engineering, helped me adjust to the voltage.
“My turn,” I said. A head-butt to the thing’s mouth caused it to gasp, and its hold on me loosened. Another head-butt followed by a knee to its gut caused it to let go.
“You’re good,” it replied, as it spat out some blood. “But you’re still nothing.”
Thanks for the confidence boost. A trail of blood ran down my arm. I’d been cut in at least one place, but between the excitement and adrenalin flowing, the pain receptors hadn’t kicked in—yet. The tingling sensation I’d gotten from the shock soon died away. “Who made you?”
The monster stopped to consider the question. It then shrugged, many of its arms giving
me an I-don’t-know kind of gesture. When it spoke, it sounded almost philosophical. “Does it matter? I was made to kill you, and that’s what I’ll do. Then I’ll go after everyone you know.”
Not a wise thing to say, as the threat made me think of Callie. The more I thought of what this thing could do to her, the angrier it made me. My claws came out, and I charged ahead. Take the pain and give it back tenfold! I raked the monster’s face, shredding its skin and taking out one of its eyes.
Its scream was an unholy one, and it tried to fight back by smashing me about the head and shoulders, but its strength was waning. I then grabbed it in a bear-hug, and we motored across the street and through Millie’s restaurant. Our momentum took out three tables, countless chairs, and shocked the hell out of everyone else.
We then went through the wall into Hubert’s Household Goods. Sinks and bathroom appliances went flying, and the monster fell to the floor, bleeding from a dozen wounds.
“What is that?” one of the employees screamed.
“An out-of-town visitor,” I said. Cliché time and that consisted of me grabbing a kitchen sink and bashing the creature over the head. It groaned, and I belted it again and again until the sink broke and the creature stopped moving. “Had enough?”
Blood and drool trickled from the side of its misshapen mouth. “I’ll still kill you.”
“Keep trying.”
With a grunt, I hauled it off the ground and heaved its carcass into the street, but it showed a surprising amount of resiliency and took off down a side street, headed toward the forest. If it was the same as the others, it would dig a hole and then dissolve.
Too tired to chase after it, I sat down, wiping the blood from my face. Pain radiated from every pore of my body, but right now I was too tired to think about cleaning up.
“Hey, man.”
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