“Eh bien, they’re not here now.”
“That’s impossible,” the girl said flatly. “They must be on the other side of the hotel.”
There was no one trapped in any windows. Through the fog of smoke the beach showed deserted as well. She ran across the lawn to the other side of the building and the gravel parking lot there—empty.
Valiant followed her, holding his mangled arm and grunting. “We need to get out of here,” he told her. “The reason I’m powerless—”
As she turned to face him her eyes went wide. She sucked in a breath and leapt for him.
“Get down!” she shouted, taking him down with her onto the sharp gravel with no regard for his shoulder.
Ba-whu-whoom! A curtain of fire and glass, cement and wood splinters blasted through the smoke.
Valiant looked up through the pain to see a sheet of glass flying through the space he’d just been taking up. If he had been standing there—
The girl put her palm on his forehead and pushed down. “There’s something else,” she said, and then another explosion went off, this one even closer than the last.
Shock wave! A wall of air lifted them up and threw them across the hotel lawn. He heard her cry out as she landed, but then he did, too. It felt like someone sledge hammered his shoulder. All his senses except touch blanked as agony jolted through him down to his feet.
He shouted his torment. Tears of pain ran down his face. Stop it, stop it! Get control! He was still alive. He needed to protect the girl!
Cracking his burning eyes open, he squinted back at the hotel. Everything was gone—leveled. Only piles of cement blocks and debris remained. A pea-soup haze of yellow dust left from disintegrating masonry swirled in a sour, choking cloud he could feel as distinct particles when he breathed. Where was the girl? Valiant coughed through his hand as he peered around.
A hundred feet from him the ocean breeze lifted the dust-covered hem of her nightie, but she lay very still.
In his life he’d seen far too many other still bodies.
Cringing at the pain, he pulled himself up and tried to run to her. The best he could manage was a lopsided lope through the sea of crumbled brick and cement blocks. The girl lay face-down, surrounded by brick fragments and glass—and one desk phone, incongruously intact. Yellow dust coated all except for a tiny, liquid trickle of crimson running from under that thick mass of dust-caked hair.
Was she alive? He’d never before administered manual CPR. What if she had spinal injuries? Warily he reached for a pulse at her neck. There it was; how odd to feel such delicate movement. He watched. Her shoulders rose and fell. Deep breath; she moaned and started to raise up, coughed.
“Steady.” He put his hand on her shoulder. She seemed to twitch fully awake at his touch and jerked away from him. “Take it slow.” He realized he didn’t even know her name. He should ask—
“L-Lina. Carolina O’Kelly.” She wiggled her fingers, testing, then pulled herself up, twisting to a sitting position. She batted at the air, trying to make a window through the gritty fog, and then gingerly patted the back of her head. “Ooo.”
Valiant one-handedly parted her hair to examine the wound. “Something caught you good,” he said. It was a nasty rip of a cut, already swelling blue-black and crusting blood. It needed antibiotics at the very least. Don’t alarm her. “It doesn’t look too bad, but we’ll keep an eye on it. Blurred vision? Double vision?” The girl shook her head carefully. “Anything else major?”
“Um... no. How about you?”
“I don’t think I have anything new to report.” Except that now maybe the pain was twice as much as it had been. Still he could smile to himself about one thing. Well, two. As she reached around to set herself straight and smooth her nightie back into place, Lina didn’t notice how that thin cotton, wet from where she’d fallen on dewed grass, let him see the shadows of her nipples underneath. He forced himself not to stare.
“Shoo,” she muttered as she slapped at the dust on herself. It left a pale yellow stain on her chemise. “I didn’t achieve Goal B-for-Bag. Maybe it’s time for Goal C-for-Cry? At least we managed to meet Goal A.”
“Goal A?”
“Getting out.”
“Ah. Très bien. Sorry about B.”
“I had some real clothes packed in it. This is not the way one wants to meet a parahero.”
He grinned and eased down next to her, carefully, carefully. “But it’s the way every parahero wants to meet a lady. Don’t sweat it. On some worlds, you’d be considered prudish to wear anything besides shoes and a hat. I don’t mind.”
“I bet. You’re really Va—? Are you sure you’re okay? You don’t look so well.”
He tried to feel how he felt. He was a norm now. His body seemed like he’d stepped into that of a stranger—of another species. He wasn’t supposed to feel pain. He wasn’t supposed to feel—anything. Suddenly there was an entire world out there pressing down on him with its presence, even invading his lungs, as well as a body that was screaming its abrupt wounding.
It wouldn’t do to let another know how much he hurt. If someone thought about it too long they’d realize the falseness of his ordinary life. And worst of all—he’d seen ordinary norms in far worse situations, braving their way toward survival despite impossible conditions. If he slacked now, Lina would think he was a coward. Hell, he’d think he was one, too.
He was no coward. No mere norm. He was a man, Valiant, and even as a norm he had duties he could never dream of ignoring.
“It’s hard to tell,” he hedged. “The shoulder is taking up all pain frequencies.” Valiant picked up the desk phone with his right hand and set it back down. Its cord was still intact, and he swung it thoughtfully. “If I can find a jack for this, we can get a rescue squad out here, peut-être.” Asking for help was embarrassing, but sometimes it was all one could do. The important thing was Lina’s safety and health. Then his own.
He took a breath and then slowly, painfully rose and offered his good hand. Instead she shook her head and got up on her own, brushing off the chemise and her hair in great clouds of dust amidst the general yellow haze.
As he ran a hand through his own grimy hair, he swiped what he’d hoped was an unnoticed tear off his cheek. Push the pain back harder. This was no time to give in to human frailty. Maybe he could work his vest into a sling later.
The distant but distinctive sound of helicopter echoed here in the yellow fog.
Local emergency systems wouldn’t have helicopters at their disposal.
Valiant twisted, trying to pinpoint the direction. “They’re coming.” He reached out to grasp Lina’s upper arm to lead her, but closed on only air as she stepped away.
“Who?”
“I ran into terrorists about three or four miles from here. They had very specialized munitions.”
Lina squeaked as her hand flew to her throat. “When I was in the shower I heard thunder—”
“That was them. And up close, the guns sound more like an atomic blast. They did a job on me.” He indicated his torn sleeve and reached again for her. Again she pulled away from his touch.
“It’s just—”
“It’s supposed to be indestructible,” he explained briskly. “Of course, so am I.” The melted metal remains of a computerized ring still held to the middle finger of his right hand, yet the skin wasn’t blistered. “I was getting ready to call for backup when they hit. C’mon, we’ve got to get out of here.”
She began to trail him just out of arm’s reach. Lina squinted at him before her face smoothed into understanding. “So the guns threw your cells into shock. No powers.”
“I barely managed to fly here before that gave out, too. I was hoping to find a phone and call the Network that way. But I spotted the fire, and then I saw you—”
“You saw me?”
“Vision powers are still on so far. Can you run? We’ve got to make some time.”
Lina blinked to come back to the Real World a
nd take all this in. He really was Valiant, and he was hurt. So many new things to think about; her head was spinning around that awful ache. But there was no excuse for hiding from reality when someone was in pain.
“Here I thought the management were just Nazis about guests stealing sheets.” She nodded at his arm as she sorted through new goals. “Let me fix that shoulder first.”
But again came the sound of the ‘copter, closer this time. She peered up into the dissipating fog. “Terrorists,” she whispered to herself.
“They’ll be coming to finish their job. I don’t think they get paid unless they can present a body.”
“Good god.”
“Are you coming?”
The extent of their situation hit Lina with the abruptness of an electric shock. Valiant had turned toward the beach and the easy, hard-packed sand route there, and she’d automatically begun to follow him. “I can work on your shoulder later.”
“I agree.” He asked hopefully, “Are you a medic?”
“Beggars can’t be—”
He began to trot.
“Valiant! Not that way.”
He turned toward her. She shook her arms to rid herself of the worst of the fear and exhaled in an oo, looking beyond Valiant and shaking her head.
“I see it,” she muttered to her guides, then directed her words at him and the beach. “The worst danger is that way.” She pointed in the opposite direction, into the forest, toward new Goal A: escape the whoevers who were after him. “There are nature trails that go way back into the island. We could keep to those or go into... the... woods...” She looked down and then up at Valiant in utter surprise. “I’m wearing my shoes. Did you—?”
“You’ll need ‘em,” Valiant replied. “D’accord, you’ve been right so far. We’ll take the trails and see how it goes.”
“But, Valiant—”
“The name’s Londo Rand. You can call me Londo. Or just Lon, since we’re going to be traveling together. C’mon, Lina. Move it.”
Reluctantly, she did. “But your arm—”
He grimaced despite his determination. “My arm can wait. Right now we run.”
“But—” They reached the first of the paths into the forest. Lina slowed down to look back uncertainly at Valiant. Obviously he was in great pain, but he pushed her gently with one hand to urge her forward.
More important than running was getting away from that touch! Lina sucked in her breath. Maybe he hadn’t noticed her jump from it. She didn’t want to look stupid in front of Valiant. She didn’t want to die in front of him, either.
“No arguments. Shut up and run,” he ordered. So together they fled down the pebbled pathway into the deepening forest.
Chapter 2
Lina was in good shape and kept up with the now-powerless Valiant as they logged a quick half-mile, then a mile. His shoulder didn’t seem to slow him. He cursed as an occasional hard step joggled it. Sometimes he cursed in French. He was from Montreal, after all.
Lina hurt just from the glass still embedded in her and that throbbing lump on the back of her head. Please-please-please— With every stride she wished that they could take a rest so she could do what she could for the both of them. Valiant ordered them to a walk every few minutes, but he kept them at a quick pace. Lina was out of breath and so was he.
This was all wrong! Valiant should be flying heroically across the sky, or leading a troupe of paraheroes, or maybe the entire United States Army, into action. This was Valiant, the number-one hero ever. Ever! (Well, maybe tied with Maximus.)
He should be uprooting trees barehanded and flinging them like javelins toward their pursuers. He should be ripping great canals into the soil of the island and letting the sea fill them, cutting those goons off with a giant moat. And she should be watching it all safely at home in front of a TV.
But this wasn’t TV, and this Valiant had to be a little stronger than a norm still, or how could he run so hard with his injury? This Valiant was certainly taller than he looked on the tube. He stood inches higher than she, and she wasn’t used to having to look up to that many people. Solidly—no, heroically built, he was tanned a nut brown, with medium-length hair that was dark underneath all that dust.
The explosion had laid a sheet of dirty yellow over the familiar Valiant costume of gray shirt, black leather pants, boots and loose black vest. Now with movement it was flaking off. And of course the small circular silver pin closed the neck. It flashed color as he moved. She wondered what it was. It always seemed just a little white dot in pictures.
The unreality of celebrity sighting tried to disguise real exhaustion and that horrible pain in her head. Lina clung to her goals for clarity. Don’t think; just run. Except—
“Rest break,” she timidly dared. They must have come over five miles already. She wasn’t prepared for a marathon and Valiant couldn’t be used to this, even without the band of agony he was broadcasting. Mustn’t let him overextend himself in these circumstances. “Please.”
“D’accord. Five minutes.”
A small log bench marked a curve in the path just ahead. Lina sank onto its far end. Valiant reached out with his right hand to lean on a tree branch, but it broke as he touched it. As his injured arm slammed into the tree trunk, he cried out horribly. He squatted on the path, grinding his teeth against the pain, and hugged his limp arm against himself. “Goddam marde-sucking skurn!” His body shook from the effort of holding in the pain for so long.
“That’s it!” Lina growled. She sat down cross-legged beside him. “We’re doing something about that shoulder right now.”
Valiant started to protest.
“Be quiet,” she said and shoved his good shoulder down before he could stand up. “Let me help. We won’t be going much farther unless we get this fixed.”
He finally relaxed under her hand, so she kept it there through sheer determination. Maybe that way he would sit there for a while at least.
“It’s dislocated,” he said. “Hurts like hell. And running isn’t doing it any good.”
“I know, and you know what I’ll have to do. Give me a few minutes to catch my breath and I’ll take care of it.” She snatched her hand back from him. Apparently her determination wasn’t that strong.
Valiant grunted. “Do you have any experience at all?”
“Do you see anyone else around here who has more? No, I’ve never done this but I’ve seen it done. On TV.”
He groaned.
She gave him a steely stare in return. “Or we could ask one of those nice terrorists to do this.”
Oh god, terrorists. How were they traveling, what did they look like? They wanted Valiant dead! If she could just help him, they’d be all right. Valiant always came through. People were always safe around Valiant.
He leaned back against the tree, rolling his eyes to Heaven. “It has to be set exactly right,” he finally said. “When my powers come back, there won’t be a second chance.”
She nodded solemnly. “I’ll ask your shoulder to guide me.”
“Comment?”
“Your shoulder knows how it’s supposed to connect.”
She couldn’t tell if the sound he made was a groan or a curse. “Listen,” he said, “do you want me to catch you a snake so you can hold it over me and dance?” The next sound he made was definitely a snort. “Eye of newt and lizard lips, eh.”
“If I were in your position, I wouldn’t be so smart with someone who had just offered to help.” Now that she was breathing normally, Lina knew he’d be ordering her to run again unless she worked on him right now. She’d gotten mad at his stubbornness so of course he was mad back. This wouldn’t accomplish anything.
“I’m sorry,” she lied as she focused herself to calm. “It’s just that we don’t—”
He held up his hand in a “stop” gesture as he twisted, every feature alert.
Gas motor. Coming closer.
“Kicking frickurnen,” he muttered, or that’s what it sounded like.
> “We’ve got to get—” Lina began, but Valiant had already grabbed her. He pulled her into the forest with his good hand.
The motor became much louder all too fast. Valiant pushed her to the forest floor, scooped up foul-smelling, leafy humus, and dumped it all over her. Then he dropped and, with groans he couldn’t withhold, did his one-handed best to cover himself in the same way.
He glanced at her. In one quick movement he spat into his hand, rubbed it in the dirt, and scoured Lina’s face with what she supposed was a dulling coat of ick.
They lay mere inches from each other, facing the path through the undergrowth. “Now, quiet,” he hissed at her, barely audible at this distance due to the motor.
Irritation kicked through her fear. What was she, an idiot? There was no time to argue as a dark green ATV vroomed up the path toward them. Two men in camo, dark face paint and big guns manned it. Equipment bristled from under straps on a mini-trailer.
With a squeal of brakes, the ATV came to a halt. Right in front of them. Had they given themselves away? Lina couldn’t breathe. Her heart pounded as if it would burst. Her body vibrated with the force of it.
The two terrorists held a terse English conversation filled with abbreviations and slang of the trade: “coord another LP,” “flag the DR-m and give it a double lick.” Apparently they were setting up a post of some kind. Lina cursed them silently.
**Kicking bastard mercenaries. More organized than I expected,** Valiant thought next to her, concentrated enough to broadcast.
Lina watched the mercs unload the equipment. They didn’t act like they’d seen them. Instead they set up a vertical dish on a tripod, fumbling with some of the connections. Now their language consisted of four-letter words and variants thereof, delivered in Aussie accents.
Touch of Danger (Three Worlds) Page 2