“Have a nice jog?” he asked me.
An irresistible urge hit my stomach and I threw up sushi and water next to Moses’s shoes. He cursed and jumped back, barely avoiding the spray from my mouth. By the time I finished, everything inside me returned to normal. Strange. Usually my nausea had unpleasant residue, like unsteadiness and spasms in my belly, but not this time. I slumped to the ground in front of my vomit pool shaking and uncontrollably weeping. Then it hit me. I didn’t have powers, and I hadn’t done a thing. Moses pulled me back here. This was bad. How was I supposed to escape when he could yo-yo me back to him at will?
I couldn’t.
I was trapped.
No different than the five weeks and change I had left to go. Closing my eyes didn’t make it go away.
All of this was real.
Moses knelt in front of me. “Gotta give it to you. For a dying girl with wide hips, you’re fast. Look, I’ll be a millionaire after taking you to see an old man. You’re not leaving until I get paid.”
He had blackmailed the wrong girl. “And if I die first?”
The brevity of his chuckle let me know he hadn’t thought of the possibility that the cancer might drop me before he got his money. After all, the deal hinged on taking me west, and Dr. Keller made no promises about the progression of my illness. Who knows when my appetite would drop out, I’d lose my “wide hips,” and I’d be barely able to move? Rolling me out on a stretcher or hospital bed to meet my father for the first time had no romantic appeal. I’d die early just for spite, and he could try strong-arming my superhuman mother into paying up.
His voice hitched with uncertainty. “Touché. Okay, then. You’ll be there tomorrow.”
“Yeah?” I told him. “No jet and stranded? Good luck with that.”
A loud boom exploded above us. A sonic boom? Then, my mother softly landed near the spot she’d left me minutes ago, bag in hand. The lid of the suitcase had been torn off, but the contents, whatever they were, appeared to be secure. “What happened here?” she asked me while sniffing the rotten egg smell. “You’re a teleporter? How is that even possible?”
Moses revealed a necklace below his collar with a gold-colored jewel hanging from its center. “Long story” was all he said about it. Mom had told me about the different colors of beryl and what they did. Which one was gold?
My eyes bulged. “How’d you know?”
“The scent. I was gone, what, five minutes? I told you to stay here.”
She told me to do lots of things: clean my room, stop cursing, count my carbs. I did none of it. Because what were rules in the context of death? Would God really judge me for a messy room or for being a size eight? Okay, maybe for the curse words. But, suppose He made me after all. My disorganization and body chemistry shouldn’t be a mystery then. I win. Rules are garbage.
“First, you tell me to stay here with dead bodies of the people you’ve killed and a stranger you’re paying,” I argued. My brief pause for breath didn’t give them time to interrupt. “And, and, a-and…you don’t ask me what I think or how I feel about whatever, being left here. Alone. I have so many questions you don’t or won’t answer, and I don’t want it anymore. At all. Screw you and screw my father for not being around.”
“You’re going to stop disrespecting me, Luciana, or — ”
“Or what?” I pointed to the dead guy I’d stolen the Ordnance from. “I’ll end up like him? Whatever. Hey, Teleporter Guy. You can ‘poof’ me back to my house, right?”
Moses stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Make it worth my while.”
Though he hadn’t revealed the amount of his “while,” he’d already extorted a promised fortune out of us. Nothing mattered to him. “How much more?” she asked.
“Quarter million. I get two million plus that when we arrive. Whether or not you survive it.” He scratched his ear. “My benefactor wanted to make sure you and your mother stay off his quadrant of the country. Obviously, you weren’t going to do that, so he’ll kill you to save himself the trouble. Your house is the first place anyone with a brain would check.”
“And why do you care?” Mom asked him.
“Four million, sweetheart. I have a vested interest in keeping you alive.”
She motioned her hand like she was trying to wind up an explanation. “Why do you want to go back? It’s dangerous and doesn’t make sense.”
The person who used to fix me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crust cut off had killed people and flown. The guy standing next to me could teleport. I wanted to run, but this time, with a superhuman parent. That and a change of clothes. What I wouldn’t give for the boring life I swore I hated. “Máma. Please?”
“Quarter of a million each way,” he repeated. “Four and a half million total.”
I wasn’t asking for a round trip. One way worked for me. Whoever wanted to kill me could try. My mother was capable of handling them, and Moses could defend me, too, if he wanted his money. Little did he know I intended to bolt. I nodded to my mother and said, “Thank you.”
The next thing I knew, I was standing in the middle of my room. All I’d been doing for the better part of my adolescence was throwing up my guts, but after we teleported and when the urge hit, nothing came out. Home. I quickly stripped naked and jumped in the shower. The hot arcing streams did wonders in helping me forget the events of the past three days. I lathered until the wonderful aroma of cucumber melon soap covered the stench of sweat and medicine. The last shower I’d taken was days ago — and I had smelled like it.
When I finished drying off and moisturizing, I slipped into comfortable clothes easy to run and hide in — black leggings and a black hooded sweatshirt. Orange and yellow light shone[XW41] through my window. The sun was coming up on Saturday morning. Too early to call Nat and say goodbye even with my terminal cancer patient you’re-allowed-to-bother-me-anytime-because-I’m-dying thing. Or the fact she had text messaged me fourteen times since Wednesday morning wondering how I was and where I’d been. Knowing her home situation, she might want to join me if I asked. “Hey,” I typed on my disposable phone. “Sorry. Been off the grid. Headed out for a while. Don’t know when I’ll be back. Love you.”
I settled on the edge of my bed with my back to the window. Without warning, Moses shoved the door open and stepped inside my room. He lingered near the edge of my stressed wood dresser and tapped his fingers against its surface. Ignoring the rhythm spent my patience. What he had to say, I guessed, was judgmental or critical, but either way, I didn’t want to hear it. After a minute or so of constant tapping, he finally said something. “Nice costume change.”
Coming from an older guy, I’d usually take it as a compliment. “Thanks.”
“How long do you intend to live in this Norman Rockwell painting?”
“Who’s Norman Rockwell?”
“How old are you?”
“Fourteen. Why?”
“When are we going? Apparently, you call the shots on this one.”
No wonder. Mom was in no hurry. I wouldn’t want to see my first love, the guy who’d left me behind a decade and a half ago. Especially without being sure what he looked like, who he was with, and if she was prettier than me. “Fifteen minutes,” I told him.
Moses rubbed the back of his neck, cleared his throat,[XW42] and said, “Ten.”
“Fifteen. What do you need four million units for, anyway?”
Moses picked at his fingernails and avoided my eyes. “Nobody ‘needs’ four million units, sweetheart, except the people who don’t have four million units. And it’s four and a half now.”
“You’re broke, huh?”
“Fifteen minutes,” he said while walking out.
Healthy people like him and Mom assumed all us terminally ill folks wanted was to live longer. Meeting my father at the risk of early death wasn’t worth the expense with someone else at the controls. Death could come for me, but when I met him, it’d be on my terms.
I pocketed my extra hol
o, went to my closet, and discovered the bag I’d packed was missing. I dug underneath the pile of clothes I’d used to hide it. Everything I could’ve needed was in there — a couple thousand tangible units, clothes, hygiene stuff, and a knife. In about ten minutes, I’d be back on the road with my homicidal mother and her high school classmate.
Near tears, I realized Moses had told me I had fifteen minutes to get myself together about five minutes ago. Was that someone knocking? No, it was the holovision, or was it? My biometric lock wouldn’t keep either of them out longer than a second, but I activated it anyway. I walked along my wall over to the window, conscious that the floor might creak beneath the pressure. When I opened the window, a gust of crisp morning air cooled my fingers.
“Soundproof on.”
Mom’s voice startled me. I turned around and dropped my bag. “We don’t have much time,” she said. Her eyes wandered to the luggage on the floor. “I need you to trust me.”
I had nothing to say. Honestly, who would blame me? “Trust you? I don’t even know you. You’re a murderer I happen to look like.”
“It was either them or us, and — ”
“I’m going to die anyway. You didn’t have to — ”
“Not today you’re not. Not if I have anything to say about it. Are you with me?”
The woman who pushed me out was a safer bet than a mercenary, I guessed, but by how much? She saved my life quite a few times already. I nodded yes.
“You’re going to need these.” She threw a heavy knapsack and a hooded black bodysuit onto my bed. “Lose the sweatshirt and put that on. Keep your shoes.”
“Why should I?”
I’d pushed my mother long enough to know the exasperation on her face. She’d spent half a million units for almost nothing on my word. By her wrinkled eyebrows and unmoving eyes, I had two choices: go with her or go with them. Leaving on my own wasn’t an option anymore, so I pulled my sweatshirt off and slipped on the bodysuit over my sneakers. Complete with gloves, the suit had material with a soft, pliable metallic finish, and the hood was a mask. Weird. Seconds after Mom helped me zip it shut, the suit made a sucking sound and fit skintight.
“Here.” She pulled the mask over my face and pressed a panel on my glove. The suit turned transparent — I could see my clothes! What was all this?
I repeated her action to deactivate the cloaking. “Where’s Moses?”
“Downstairs.” She sounded annoyed. “I got what we needed from him.”
Oh no. Another corpse, and this time it was in our house? “He’s — ”
“Alive.” She dismissed my insinuation with a hand wave. “Soundproof off.”
Heavy footsteps boomed up our staircase. Mom tossed me the bag she’d brought. I put my arms through the straps. We hurried into my closet and shut it from the inside. The strong funk of my sweaty clothes stung my nose. A lot of good skipping laundry did to hide my intentions to run away. She’d known about it anyway.
Was the airflow hissing in my mask audible to anyone else but me? Didn’t matter. I only inhaled when the burning in my chest from holding my breath overwhelmed me. Mom grabbed my hand in hers, and we vanished into thin air. Waiting them out here wouldn’t work, would it? Then again, I wasn’t the assassin with superpowers. She’d thought this out more than I had. There had to be logic in Mom’s actions, and against my better instincts, I needed to trust her.
A loud crack let us know they had entered my room by force. My mind raced. The sounds of what they did were distinct. The heavy plunks were my mattress and box spring being dislodged, and the rattle, clank and whoosh were my curtains and window dressings. The walk-in closet was the last believable place in my room for us to be hiding. Mom’s hand squeezed the circulation out of mine, and then it released. The next thing I heard were the clicks of Ordnance being cocked and deafening blasts. I thought I’d hemorrhage and bleed out through my ears because of the noise. I watched bright bursts of bluish light pass through my body, singe my hanging clothes, and burn into the wall behind us.
Mom dropped us through the floor into the kitchen, which was beneath my bedroom. I quickly caught my breath from the roller-coaster-like, descending sensation, and we materialized. Though no armed men were stationed there, there were three I saw outside the breakfast nook windows scrambling to the front of the house.
We were trapped.
“What now?” I whispered.
She bent over, hands on her knees. For the first time, I noticed she, too, had a knapsack on her back. I heard a bell-like ringing and deep breathing, almost like Mom was gasping right next to my head. The mask must’ve had connected comms built into it. “Just a minute,” she said. “Need EpiPen from my bag. Help me.”
Instead, I grabbed the largest knife from our cutting block and tucked myself in the corner between the refrigerator and the hallway entrance to the kitchen leaving Mom to fend for herself. It was the first time I ever wished myself to have a smaller body out loud. I mean, I always wanted to be skinnier, but to say it and hear my voice pronounce the words made them more real than thinking them. The backpack didn’t help. Mom frantically motioned for me to drop the blade, but I waved her off. I didn’t want her to die any more than me.
I tightly clutched the knife’s wooden handle in my gloved hand and steeled myself to use it. Whoever came this way, I had to be prepared to take him out without second-guessing. Either him or us. I debated myself to muster the courage — I could do it. No, I couldn’t do it. There weren’t enough Our Father prayers to erase the stain of slicing a person to death. No, I could do it. Self-defense. Protecting this house and our lives normalized everything, and my brain wouldn’t get hung up on what I’d forced it to do. From that point on, my thoughts cleared.
A cylindrical Ordnance barrel poked into the kitchen. The person aiming it hadn’t passed through yet. He couldn’t pivot the weapon in my direction until he entered, and Mom had taken shelter behind the island. I passed the blade handle to my gloved left hand and held my breath.
From the corner of my eye, I saw the rounded edge of a black boot. Jabbing the steel into his leg wouldn’t disarm him, and as he was right handed, there was no easy way to get to his chest. I lowered my arm’s level enough to reach his midsection and stabbed the mesh spot to the right of his stomach. He groaned in pain and rapidly fired at the kitchen’s far wall. I pushed the blade in farther [XW43]until he collapsed facedown onto the Italian marble.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The emotional rush was fantastic and awful. The man at my feet writhed and moaned from the wound I’d given him. Mom grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the refrigerator. I tiptoed over the body and tried ignoring the bloodied butcher knife he’d taken out of his side and the pooling blood. He hadn’t died. Not yet. I wasn’t a killer, but the gash might be fatal if left unattended.
Lucky for him, the shots he’d fired had drawn reinforcements. A five-member team sidestepped their fallen comrade and filed into the kitchen. Two of them docked their weapons and helped the injured guy out of the house. The remaining three trained their Ordnance on us, and the one running point on the attack ordered us to surrender.
Mom announced her actions first. She raised her hands. I did the same. Of course, this was the headlining act to our show. Soon, they would fire kill shots, the ammunition would pass through us and destroy the kitchen she’d so carefully remodeled last year. Big deal. Dropping two million units plus on extortion meant she had the money to fix things around here. I’d never see the tile at the kitchen entrance the same way again. Doubtful she’d rip up all of it for me.
“I can still see you,” I whispered through my teeth. My heartbeat throbbed in my ears. “What are you waiting for?”
The delay tensed my entire body. The first time she revealed her powers, I experienced a sense of shock and awe. Upstairs, it turned into wonder and now terror. Were Moses’ abilities this unreliable? They didn’t seem to be. Finally, she pronounced two words syllable by syllable. A-dre-nal fa-tigue. Adr
enal fatigue? Adrenal glands could get fatigued? My legs weakened. She’d needed my help, and I’d ignored her. She’d been rendered powerless. We were screwed.
“Freeze. Both of you,” the point man barked at us. “You so much as twitch and we’ll shoot.”
A lump formed in my throat, and I couldn’t swallow past it. Why hadn’t they opened fire like upstairs? Had their orders changed, or were they more afraid than we were? Their hesitation meant to me they had no idea what Mom was capable of or what they may think I was able to do. Neither did I. Acting out of fear meant either us or them could end up dead. This was the part where Mom bargained to save our lives and offered boatloads of units like she’d done before.
No. She was a silent statue.
Moving anything but my mouth might [XW44]get me made into a human piece of Swiss cheese, so I urged her on with my voice. “Say something,” I whispered. When she did not immediately do that, I stepped up and improvised. My raised arms tingled and ached. “Okay. Okay, look. Put the Ordnance down, and we’ll all walk away from this alive.”
One of them adjusted his weapon’s setting. “That thing’s threatening us.”
I’d been called many things in fourteen years, but a genderless thing was not one of them. Maybe I’d seen better days, but my hair wasn’t boy short, and I certainly wasn’t shaped like a dude. Regardless of his insult, I walked back my previous statement. “I meant you’ll go home to your families. Tell your boss mission accomplished. Leaving was my idea in the first place, and I don’t want to go anymore. My mother and I will stay put here. You have our word.”
I’d bluffed way bigger than this, like convincing Bryce Parrish I was older than fourteen. The important part was[XW45] he’d thought I was telling the truth. The mask hid my facial expressions, which was a good thing in case I had a visible tell, and they couldn’t see the sweat trails rolling down my face quicker than the suit’s cool interior could dry them.
The Nuclear Winter Page 7