Ability (Omnibus)

by Hill, Travis

  A loud knock brought him to full wakefulness, and he walked to the door. After removing the alarm and putting it inside of the duffel, he opened the door to find five men standing outside. A look through a gap between two of the men revealed a small crowd in the parking lot below.

  “Yes?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

  “Give us the whore,” a man that was Garret’s age demanded from his left. An older man, Garret was sure he was the younger man’s father, clapped his son on the shoulder, and turned to Garret.

  “What Franklin here means, is that we would like to speak with Miss Donella.”

  “What about?” Garret asked, deciding to not hide the fact she was in his room.

  “Oh, you know,” the older man said vaguely, “Town business. Something an outsider, no offense, wouldn’t be interested in.”

  “None taken,” Garret said. He stood on his toes and pretended to look over the mens’ shoulders to the crowd milling around the parking lot. “Seems like a lot of you just to talk to a single woman about town business. No offense.”

  “Mr….”

  “Garret.”

  “Mr. Garret, we believe the woman was involved in a murder last night.”

  “Really?” Garret asked, pretending to be surprised. “What time did that happen?”

  “Listen, asshole—” Franklin growled before being cut off by his father.

  “Mr. Garret, it’s a good bet that you’ve got some kind of supernatural ability. Not many that come through here are free of that burden these days. And while I’m sure you’ve seen many things in your travels, and have had to defend yourself, or possibly even go on the offensive just to survive, let me assure you that we don’t need to be polite about this. The five of us, and the thirty or so waiting down there are all packing a wallop, the same as you.

  “We are being polite because the world is evil enough with whatever has been unleashed, and as you might have noticed, we haven’t broken down like other communities. We have no quarrel with you, and though you are trying Franklin’s patience, and to be honest, mine as well, we wish no harm on you. We could have blasted a hole through the wall and hoped that she survived long enough to face justice, but again, we have no quarrel with you.”

  “Good speech,” Garret said. When the older man opened his mouth, Garret held up a hand. “I’d like to help you gentleman, and I will. Miss Donella was with me all evening, and all through the night. In fact, she’s still in my company.”

  “Fucking whore,” Franklin said, leaning his head around the door frame.

  “Well, I wouldn’t go around insulting people like that,” Garret said. “She’s a woman, I’m a man. We do those kinds of things.”

  “I’ve had just about enough of your smart mouth, mister,” the older man said, his temper beginning to unravel. “Give us the woman or we’ll take her from your corpse.”

  “I guess this is where I warn you boys to pack up your little mob and head home before someone gets hurt.” The man on the right started to bring his arms up, but Garret pointed at him, never taking his eyes off the group’s leader. “You probably don’t want to do that.”

  “Mister,” the man second from the right said, “you might get one or all of us, but you ain’t gettin’ by the whole town.”

  Garret smiled at the man’s reasonable tone, recognizing the suggestive push in his voice.“You might be right about that.” He set the man’s brain to slowly begin boiling in his skull. “Well, gentlemen,” he said as if he was taking his leave of a club meeting, “I’m sure you are busy with town business and such.”

  “Fuck you,” Franklin snarled and took a step inside the door.

  Garret clapped his hands together and the five men nearly disintegrated from the blast wave. The concrete balcony in front of his open door shattered and exploded outward, killing more than half of the waiting mob below. The pressure wave that followed the explosion knocked over anyone left standing. Garret blinked in surprise at the devastation, then stepped out of his room and jumped down from the second floor, landing on his feet. He immediately grabbed a woman by her throat, channeling force down his arm, decapitating her when he squeezed her neck and twisted his hand.

  He let go of the corpse’s neck and raised his left arm to shield himself from a miniature tornado of sand, shoving it back toward his attacker. He began to walk across the parking lot, killing anyone still alive with a range of attacks. A man in a flannel shirt and jeans to his right withered then crumbled into dust. A short, fat woman in front of him flew at least twenty meters, as if she were a football that had been punted, before crashing face-first into the edge of the raised sidewalk across the street from the motel.

  As he made his way through the crowd, he was death incarnate, the destroyer of their world. Garret always relished the feeling of power that flowed through his mind, his body when his aggression was up. This felt different. He’d never felt his abilities this fluid, this easily wielded before. Not just the ease of which he cycled through them, but the almost unlimited power that he felt behind each attack. He amused himself as man and woman alike fell before him, failing in their clumsy attempts to use their abilities against him.

  In less than three minutes, the parking lot was a ruin, the asphalt soaking in the blood from the dozens of bodies strewn about. Garret was the only one left standing. He caught a movement from the corner of his eye and turned toward the office. The proprietor, a mousy little man that looked to be in his sixties, had stayed inside the small office. Garret walked to the glass door and opened it, waiting a moment to see if the man would attempt to fight. When all he could hear was heavy breathing and snuffling sobs behind the counter, he chuckled and walked in.

  Garret rang the bell on the counter three times. The old man finally peeled himself from the floor, shivering in fright at the bloody apparition across from him.

  “Who runs this shithole?” Garret asked.

  “I… I do,” the old man stuttered.

  “Seriously? You run this whole town? No offense, old man, but you don’t seem like mayor material.”

  “N-n-no, I run the motel.”

  “Well who runs this shithole of a town then?”

  “The Stocktons, the Radeks, the Haleys, and the Barcos.”

  Garret squinted down at the old man. “And who, out of those assholes, is in charge?”

  “D-D-David Stockton and Belan Radek.” Garret waited for the man to name more names.

  When the old man didn’t, Garret dinged the bell on the counter again, making the proprietor visibly jump in fright.

  “Gary Haley. Thomas Barco.”

  “Right. And where might I find these esteemed gentlemen?”

  “You… you just killed them.”

  “All of them?” Garret asked, a smile brightening his face.

  “I didn’t see Thomas with them, but everyone else…”

  “Awesome,” Garret said. “By the way, I’m going to need a different room. I think the balcony is broken. You might want to get that fixed before someone gets hurt.”

  He winked at the old man. The man stared at him, afraid to move. Garret rang the bell twice, each time making the old man jerk as if he’d touched a live electrical line.

  “What’s your name, old man?”

  “Jacob.”

  “Jacob what?”

  “Jacob… Stockton.”

  “Well how about that,” Garret said to himself. “Now, how about getting me a different room, Jacob?”

  Jacob stayed frozen to his spot until Garret rang the bell three more times. The old man sprang to life like a wind-up toy, walked to the peg board and retrieved a manual key, the electronic keys now less than useless.

  “Many thanks, Jacob,” Garret said, taking the key from the man. “If I were you, I’d be looking to avoid any kind of trouble. I’d sit in this little office and keep your yap shut.”

  He left the office and walked across the parking lot, careful to not step in any of the congealing pools of blood or sof
t body parts that littered the pavement. When he reached the section where his room was, he looked up, seeing Donella in the doorway. Her eyes were wide with either fear or shock, Garret couldn’t tell. She looked down at him.

  “Jacob gave us a new room,” he said, holding up the key. “One-oh-six. Do me a favor and grab all the gear off the nightstand and table, stuff it in the big duffel, and toss all of the bags down to me.”

  Donella turned and went to the nightstand, gathering up Garret’s tablet, chron, a few other items she didn’t recognize, and put them in the largest duffel. When she tried to pick it up, it felt like her shoulder had been ripped out of its socket. Donella stood up and walked to the doorway again, looking down at Garret for a few seconds, wondering how the young man was able to carry one duffel, let alone a second one, without breaking a sweat.

  “Oh, yeah,” he called up to her. “I forgot to tell you that they are probably pretty heavy. Just drag them to the edge and push them over.”

  Donella went back to the large duffel and pulled on the nylon straps. The bag scraped across the floor a few centimeters at a time. By the time she’d made it the meter back to the doorway, she was sweating. She sat down behind the bag and pushed at it with her legs. On the third push, it went over the edge. Her ears waited for the crash, but none came. She scooted to the edge of the doorway and looked down. Garret was rummaging through the bag. He looked up and gave her the thumbs-up sign.

  Donella retrieved the smaller duffel, her arms aching by the time she made it to the doorway. She heaved the bag out, and watched it fall to the ground. She blinked when it landed softly, getting another thumbs-up from Garret. She took one last look around the room before grabbing the tablet bags. Satisfied she wasn’t leaving anything behind, she went to the doorway. Donella wondered how she was going to get down. The balcony for three meters on each side of the doorway was missing, and the only way out of the room was straight down to the parking lot.

  “Jump,” Garret said, waving a hand at her. When she looked at him in fear, he waved again. “Come on, I promise you’ll make it safely.”

  Donella held her breath and stepped out of the room and into the empty space. She panicked at the speed of her fall, bracing her legs for the landing, knowing one or both of them would end up broken. Her feet touched the walkway that lined the lower floor, and a half second later she felt as if a weight had been loaded onto her back. She blinked and realized that it was just her normal weight returning to her somehow.

  “See?” he asked with a grin.

  He put his hand out, and Donella handed him the tablet bags. He took them and put them on top of the large duffel, then reached his hand out again. She looked at his hand, then his face, then to the carnage in the parking lot, and finally above her head to the missing six meter chunk of concrete walkway. When her eyes met his face again, his grin became wider. Donella stepped forward and took his hand, allowing herself to be pulled in close. They held each other, oblivious of the wreckage of bodies for the moment.

  “What have you done?” she asked softly, her lips near his neck.

  “I think I just became mayor of Brewster,” he joked.

  She pushed herself gently away from him, looking up into his strange gray eyes. Donella blinked twice at that, remembering his eyes a dark green, almost brown the afternoon before. She reached up and wiped away a gob of congealing blood from over his left eye.

  “I’ve seen some of them use whatever power they have,” she said, “but never anything like what you did.”

  “Yeah,” Garret said, his eyebrows dipping into a frown. “I’ve never done anything like this. I mean, I’ve had to take care of some people before, but I’ve never wiped out this many at once. And never with this kind of power.” His frown turned down to her. “Do you feel anything?”

  “A little sick,” she answered.

  “No, I mean, anything in your head?”

  “Nothing. Maybe the pill you gave me expired.”

  “Hmmm. Not likely. But it seems a little suspicious that I suddenly became Shiva and you suddenly don’t feel the white noise in your head. Are you doing the exercise?” She shook her head, having forgotten about the mental trick he’d taught her when he’d unleashed hell on the crowd in the parking lot. “Normally it would be buzzing so loudly that you’d feel compelled to release the pressure you felt in it.”

  “Like, get a drill and make some holes?”

  “No,” he said with a laugh. “Usually the manifestation of an ability. I was ready when mine came, but I’d…” Garret trailed off. “But most others, theirs usually gets channeled when their brains spin up. It’s probably more dangerous the first day or two after juicing than at any other time. I watched a girl freeze her own arm off, not realizing what she was doing. Right before she died, she told me that she didn’t even know it was happening until it was too late.”

  Donella didn’t ask how the girl died, didn’t want to know. A part of her was terrified of Garret, of his ability to lay waste in such a devastating manner. She’d watched him walk through the mass of townsfolk, murdering each of them in a different fashion. More frightening was his seemingly casual attitude about having killed more than thirty humans in less than three minutes. It was as if his eyes immediately blanked out the blood, the bodies, the bits of flesh, the shards of concrete and iron.

  Another part of her felt some kind of link with the young man. He wasn’t the first traveler to offer to help her run away from Brewster, and he wasn’t the first to treat her with kindness, like she was a human being instead of a norm, a maid, a woman. A black woman.

  The link wasn’t physical, but it felt like a rope was somehow tied around her, around her mind, and whenever he moved away from her, she felt almost compelled to follow, as if the rope had become taut. Whenever he approached her, she felt the rope begin to coil around her.

  “What do we do now?” she asked, feeling the link grow stronger as she stepped forward and put her arms around his neck.

  Garret smiled down at her. “First, we should probably check room one-oh-six and make sure the bed has been made and there are clean towels. Then I guess we should go find this Valin Radek asshole and make him tell us where Yvonne is. Then maybe alert the rest of the citizens of Brewster that their kinfolk had a bit of an accident when they tried to attack the new mayor of their fair little burg.”

  CHAPTER 15

  North Santa Fe, New Mexico - April 16, 2046

  Brian reached over and pulled the sheet up to Michelle’s chin. He leaned over and kissed her one last time before pulling the sheet over her head. He cried for a few minutes, letting his rage and his sadness do battle within him. When he was done, he walked to the window and pulled the heavy curtain back just enough to look outside. The parking lot of the old tourist motel was a wasteland of shattered windows, crumbled concrete, blackened vehicles that still smoldered, and what looked like a lake of blood.

  He gritted his teeth. He hadn’t wanted it to end like this. He wanted to tell Derry that he was sorry, he should have listened to her. Derry was long gone, heading to Chicago if she hadn’t paid him back with a lie. Brian thought about Garret immediately after. None of them knew where he had gone, or if he had survived the upheaval in Austin. There were no phone or net communications to try and get in touch with either of them.

  A scraping noise made his heart race. He peeled back the curtain an inch again to see if he could see any threats. Brian had no idea how many of them had been waiting for him and Michelle, but it had to have been at least a hundred. He’d shielded Michelle as best as he could but it hadn’t been enough. Brian looked over at the bed and saw that the lower half of the sheet had soaked completely through with blood. All the surgery modules in the world couldn’t have helped Michelle. She’d been torn almost in half. Her scream had made him look back for just a second, long enough for one of the men to get a shot at him with an old rifle. The bullet had entered the meat of his bicep, the pain intense, almost blinding.

 
; The man that shot him ended up like the rest, dead and staring up at the sky. Just like Michelle. Just like probably three quarters of the world. Brian glanced out the window one more time. He let the curtain fall back in place as he made up his mind. He walked back to the bed, kissing her forehead through the sheet one more time before backing up to the door. Brian let his ability channel heat into Michelle’s body. Within seconds her corpse began to smoke, a few seconds later it was on fire. A minute later, nothing but ashes were left in the massive hole that had formed in the melted the plastiform mattress that all cheap old motels seemed to have.

  Brian Carter counted to ten and opened the door. He stepped out into the new world, ready to kill the first person that crossed his path.

  Epilogue

  Fruitland Park, Florida - January 17, 2046

  “You better listen up, you fucking monkeys,” Tommy shouted at the crowd cowering below him. “Ya’ll are going to take a branding, or you’ll hang from the overpass.”

  The crowd of men, women, and children bucked and surged at the threat of being branded. A teenage boy broke from the group and attempted to run. The boy’s mother screamed at him, a dozen hands holding her back from chasing after her son. She wailed and collapsed seconds later when her youngest was flung into the air, the boom of multiple guns muting the screams of the crowd in the pit. The boy’s body was flung into the air again, this time almost ten meters above their heads, and held there for over a minute while the men surrounding the pit had more target practice.

  “That’s the shit that will get you dead!” Tommy screamed at the mass of humans below him.

  “Goddammit, Tommy,” Dale Stoner called out to him from his post on the wall, “you can’t teach stupid niggers anything. Ain’t you learned that by now?”