by Brian Cody
“Gotcha!” David exclaimed as he latched onto Turrisi’s shoulders and hoisted him to a girder some ten feet below the road. As Turrisi was released, he looked around. To his immediate left stood Erik and Nate; to his front right was Shawn, and in front of him stood Bryen, who looked towards the road with his right hand raised. As Turrisi looked to the chasm through which he had plunged, an extended portion of Bryen’s shadow contracted into an elongated, oily streak, slithered over to the nearest girder, down a connecting maze of beams, and then descended into his silhouette.
“So let me get this straight”, Nate called to Bryen. “You can make things intangible too? You said nothing about that before.”
“That’s what I said!” Shawn blared. “B-money, we’re gonna have a discussion about your abilities!”
“How did you guys get here?” Turrisi asked as he walked to the opposite edge of his girder.
“We flew”, Erik replied. “We met up at the rooftop and then flew here. We came to the bridge, and when we saw you guys reengage after that costly explosion, we passed under the Lynchburg side.”
“They caught my attention via a paper airplane with ‘we got Turrisi’ written inside of it, so I followed it by diving over the side, right before you flipped the truck”, David explained.
“You’re welcome”, Shawn interjected.
“Speaking of flipping the truck”, Bryen began as he thrust his hands into his coat pockets, “you just flipped a truck with passengers in it.”
“They kind of deserved it”, Nate remarked with a shrug.
“I strapped them in right before I flipped the truck. Unless those are faulty seatbelts, they should (maybe) be fine”, Turrisi replied as he looked up and listened to the reverberations along the road.
“As much as I want to bask in the fact that we just beat the crap out of evil, I kind of want to know when we can leave”, David remarked.
“When the cops leave”, Erik replied. “It’s too bright for any of us to rush into the sky unnoticed. The other side of the bridge is probably swarming with police as well, so that exit is closed.”
“Well, when do the cops leave?” Shawn asked.
“When they pick up all of the canisters”, Bryen moaned.
“How long will that take?” David asked.
“You probably don’t want an estimate.”
Chapter Nine: Monday, 8 February [Part Two]
“I spy, with my little eye, something black”, Shawn began as he reclined on a girder and looked to the sunset’s reflection on the water.
“B-money”, Nate answered as he sat along an adjacent ledge, his hands in his pockets, and his hood on his back.
“I said we’re not doing skin color, Nate”, Shawn replied.
“B-money’s trench coat”, Nate replied.
“Nope, that was the last one”, Shawn replied.
“B-money’s pants”
“Nope”
“B-money’s boots”
“Ding”, Shawn replied before yawning and looking up to the road.
“Seeing that you’ve gone through my entire outfit, can you stop picking the same color?” Bryen asked as he sat across from Shawn and looked up.
“I spy, with my little eye, something that is white”, Shawn began.
“Everyone except for B-money and Erik”, Nate replied.
“Nope”, Shawn replied.
“B-money’s hair”, Erik replied as he reclined on a girder behind Nate and scrolled through his phone.
“Ding”, Shawn replied. “I spy_”
“My eyes”, Bryen interjected.
“Ding; B-money wins”, Shawn replied.
“How long have we been here?” Bryen asked as he faced forward.
“You have a phone too, Bryen”, David called as he sat on a girder behind Turrisi and wrote out a text.
“My battery’s dead”, Bryen grunted.
“Three hours, twenty-seven minutes”, Turrisi replied as he looked at his phone.
“Are the cops gone yet?” Nate asked.
“It sounds like the Hazmat team just arrived…no”, Bryen replied as he tapped the back of his head onto his girder. “I’m almost tempted to move the stuff myself if it means speeding things up.”
“I’m not”, Shawn replied, “I’m not getting radiation poisoning so you can make do with your impatience”, he finished while closing his eyes.
“I wasn’t serious”, Bryen muttered.
“I know; I’m just bustin’ your chops.”
“Everyone stop talking!” David called as he jumped to his feet, “better yet, keep talking, but talk about normal stuff…that doesn’t involve this.”
“Why?” Turrisi asked.
“Clare’s calling me!” David exclaimed.
“Who’s looking forward to their classes this semester?” Shawn asked as he opened his eyes.
David turned, pressed the phone to his ear, inhaled, and hummed the word, “Hey!” David then looked back as the group conversed, some groaning, and others flailing. “I did see that!” David exclaimed. “It’s scary, isn’t it? Yeah, me and the guys had to run to WallMark when we all got the text. They wouldn’t let us leave the store or anything…it was crazy! …What’s that? Who was there? No, I don’t think I saw her…she…must’ve been at another part…of the store… Yeah, I heard that they stopped all of the bad guys”, David spun to the group and winked. “Yeah, it’s a good thing Lynchburg’s got such fine law enforcement! …Well, I was going to go to the Rot for dinner, but it might be late by the time we meet back. What if I met you later tonight at your window? …Okay, I love you…no, I love you more! Bye!”
“Get a room”, Bryen muttered, while David lowered his phone, looked to the group, and sighed.
“How’s Clare?” Turrisi asked.
“She’s…fine”, David replied as he sat and looked to the river below. “It’s just that…even more than before, I hate having to keep my powers a secret from her…when do you think I should tell her?”
“If we’re going by official protocol”, Erik began, “you’re not supposed to tell until after one year of marriage, but, around the seventies, they realized that marriages with secrets tend to not work very well… If you were to tell her right before getting engaged, the FBI would look in the opposite direction.”
“That’ll be an interesting conversation”, David replied as he looked towards the sunset, “I wonder how she’ll react once I tell her that we’re the ones who stopped this.”
“Shoot”, Shawn coughed as he reared up, “if my mom ever found out that it was me out there today, she’d have a conniption.”
“Conniption”, Bryen muttered.
“B-money, are they done yet?” Turrisi asked.
“From the sound of it, they just successfully loaded the first vat”, Bryen replied.
“What!?” Nate blared, “It took them ten minutes to load one vat?”
“They have protocol to go by”, Erik reasoned.
“I should just lightning out of here!” Nate grunted while standing.
“Lightning…out of here”, Bryen muttered.
“Klinge, I swear, if you attack those hazmat guys and cause a nuclear explosion!” David bellowed as he stood.
“Relax, buddy; I won’t attack them. I don’t want radiation sickness any more than you do”, Nate replied. “Remember what I talked about earlier? How I can sort-of-fly? I engulf myself in a bolt of lightning, rise on a sharp angle into the upper atmosphere, go horizontal for a moment, then dive back down. It’s how I transport myself, and it’s how the cops have never seen me escape. It’s not exactly instantaneous motion, but a couple of miles are usually completed after a few seconds.”
“And how do you decelerate from those speeds to keep yourself from dying upon impact?” Erik grunted.
“I use the first half of the arc to accelerate, and the last half to begin decelerating via magnetic repulsion; then, I create a miniature explosion when I land for further deceleration. Does that make sense
?” Nate asked.
“No, but can you do it with more than one person in tow?” Shawn asked as he stood.
“Well…yeah…in theory”, Nate replied with a shrug.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Lightning away!” Shawn exclaimed.
“I don’t know if you guys would be able to handle it…the speeds, the extreme changes in altitude, the landing, and the electric shock that’s bound to hit you…none of those would be particularly enjoyable.”
“Well, what about it, boys? Are we men enough for Nate’s lightning?” Shawn asked.
“Seeing that I don’t have powers and am more susceptible to death by impact”, Turrisi called. “I’d rather risk waiting for the cops to leave. Then we can all fly away in a normal, non-electrically-charged manner.”
“I’m gonna side with Turrisi”, Bryen averred.
“Let’s just wait it out for a bit”, David suggested as he turned to Shawn. “How much longer can they be? It’s freakin’ canisters.”
Another hour crept by, with the chirps of backing vehicles and the calls of officers and hazmat workers sounding overhead. As that hour diminished, and another succeeded, the group, one by one, redirected their attention to their phones, to their surroundings, and towards the nocturne, becoming slouched as they reclined, their expressions becoming muddled as they rested, and the temperature falling around them until their exhalations were visible; yet still, as two hours passed, and the third hour drew near, the sounds of working men were constant.
“On to number three!” sounded atop the bridge, causing the group, in one unisonous thrust, to palm their faces.
“Oh, bull crap!” Turrisi roared as he stood. “Nate, I have homework, and I’m getting cold. Get us out of here!”
“Are you sure?” Nate asked.
“We’ll vote”, David began as he stood. “All in favor of getting-the-frick-out of here?” All hands were raised, first rights and then lefts in case of detractors. “Klinge, get us-the-frick-out of here!” David exclaimed.
“…Okay, but I warned you…” Nate began as he stood. “Everyone, gather around me”, he continued as the other five hopped across the beams. “Where to?”
“We should probably stop by Legacy”, Erik remarked as the group circled around Nate.
“Legacy it is”, Nate replied as he pointed towards the cloudless sky and then squeezed his fist, a dim flash of electric energy forming around his hand.
Along the top of the bridge, a beam of light was sighted, striking, as it seemed to the officers on both sides of the viaduct, the river, or, perhaps, a lower portion of the bridge. The operation was halted just as the pale-white column vanished and as a reverberating howl passed through the air, and the hazmat-suit-wearing men darted from the fourth, fifth, and sixth canisters for fear of one or all of them detonating from fulgurant contact, but, as the lightning dispersed, and the sky darkened, they inched back to them.
***
Nate sighed as he stood at the nadir of a shallow crater, a few yards in width, of displaced and electrified earth. He turned to his teammates crawling from him, and he looked beyond them, to his left, where a line of trees stood. Then, he looked to his right, towards a grouping of about five or six three-story buildings arranged in circular formation and connected by a road which curved out of view. “I think this is it”, he suggested as he looked to the group. “Is this it?”
“God, why!?” Turrisi roared as he lunged to his feet, stumbled for two steps, collapsed to his knees, and coughed an admixture of acids and partly-digested meals.
“Bad idea!” Shawn coughed as he stumbled in the opposite direction, his arms flailing, and his eyes spinning before he turned and collapsed onto his left side. “It was a horrible idea; it was—it_” Shawn set loose a thickened sludge before coughing, spitting to expunge the flavor, and then, with a series of convulsive shakes, vomiting once more.
“It wasn’t worth it”, Bryen moaned as he collapsed onto his stomach and pulled on bundles of grass, “Flight’s never worth it!” he squealed.
“Piekarsky, are you kidding me?” Erik wailed as he rested his hands on his knees and coughed, his head painted with sweat. Unlike the other four passengers, David stood on the perimeter of the crater.
“It took me months before my body could readjust to the effects of doing that”, Nate explained.
“Months!?” Shawn roared as he rolled onto his back, “You should’ve told us that beforehand!”
“Quit being a bunch of Sallies and get up!” David proclaimed. After five more minutes, three instances of violent spewing between Shawn and Turrisi, and one near-miss from Erik, the group started along the woods and beside the road snaking through the apartment complex. After a jog across a short ravine which housed an unused fire pit, they came upon the second group of buildings and crept behind Building One Thousand, climbed the side steps, and stopped in front Apartment 1010.
Erik knocked, turned from the door, and vomited along the fallow-brown, vinyl wall between that apartment and the one beside it. He then reared up to knock again, but the door was yanked open, and, standing within the illuminated entrance, Lamback looked to them, his eyes widened and his mouth agape. “Tell me!” he called as Erik stepped in and the remainder of the group followed. “Please—I beg of you guys—tell me that you’re not the six intervening blurs the Department of Justice just informed me of.”
“Well”, Nate began as he stepped in last and the door was slammed behind him, “how gullible are you feeling tonight?” he asked as the group was herded into the kitchen.
Lamback groaned, with his arms raising as he looked to the ceiling. He spun to the group and thrust his right pointer, but, with another spin, he stomped over the carpeted floor in the dining room, stopped as he stood alongside of the square, four-chaired table, and spun back with visage radiant. “Although no one—by some ridiculously substantial act of God—was killed, you six could all still go to jail for welfare endangerment, inciting and promoting vigilantism, destruction of property, and, my personal favorite, grand theft!”
“…Do you have anything to drink?” David asked.
“Fridge”, Lamback replied.
“Sweet”, David spoke as he opened the refrigerator. “Does anyone want anything?”
“What does he have?” Bryen asked as he reclined along the sink.
“Guys!” Lamback exclaimed, “This is horrible! You just got yourselves and you got me in some really really deep crap! Erik, Dave!”
“Yeah?” David asked as he looked over the refrigerator door with a bottle of water in hand.
“No, Dave Turrisi—I—Erik, Turrisi!” Lamback groaned as he pulled at his hair, “out of all of them, you know better! You know the rules, the legislations, the laws that were broken; the risks! I shouldn’t have even gotten that phone call. I thought I could trust at least you two with the public’s safety!”
“B, no cranberry juice; but he’s got bottled water and coke”, David called, while Lamback spoke.
“What kind of coke?” Shawn asked as he looked over his shoulder.
“Coke in the glass bottle”, David replied.
“Oh, dang, I’ll have some of that”, Nate interrupted as he spun around.
“Seconded”, Bryen replied.
“Grab me one!” Shawn called as he grabbed the front of his cape and untied it from his neck.
“…No offense, Dave…Lamback”, Erik began, “but it went better than I thought, and it went better than anyone within the DOJ would have imagined. They don’t know any protocols, we’ve never trained as a team, and Nate is lacking in the empathy department, but besides all of that, it went off, almost, without disruptions.”
“No one was killed by any of our actions”, Turrisi added, “and the only major damage that could be legitimately attested to us is the car thrown through the office window.”
“Wrong”, Lamback howled as he stomped into the living room. “Thanks to the Anti-Vigilantism Act passed in 1950 during a secret session
in congress (back when those were legal), any damage that occurred while you were acting beyond the scope of authorized law enforcement is charged to you. The wires along the bridge, the thousands of gallons of incinerated gasoline, the office floor that now needs to be renovated; heck, even the damage done to the garbage trucks; even though those items were stolen by the perpetrators, the United States Government still has the authority to prosecute you over the severe destruction that you incurred to them! When my immediate superiors hear about this, they’ll more than likely_”
“Extol you with the necessary amount of praise for thinking so well on a situational basis.”
Lamback picked up his television remote and spun, first looking to Erik and Turrisi, who were straightening their postures. He then looked to his kitchen where David, Shawn, Bryen, and Nate stared at the door with beverages in hand. Lamback looked to the door as it was closed, and he looked to the left of it, towards a middle-aged man standing at 6'2" with toned arms and wide shoulders similar in proportion to a heavyweight boxer, a slight but discernible gut that pressed against his white sweater, a pair of sepia-brown, khaki pants, and seal-brown boots. Lamback then spun to the television, deactivated it, and tossed the remote to the couch on his right before turning and pushing out his chest.
“You left your door open, David”, the man spoke, his voice a smooth, low-pitched hum.
“Sorry”, David, Turrisi, and Lamback replied before glancing to one another.
Lamback looked back to the man with the graying blonde hair ceasing at the top of his forehead, lifted his right arm, and said, “Gentlemen, this is former Special Agent in Charge for the FBI, and current Director for the Affairs of Gifted Persons within the Department of Justice, Arthur Grant.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you all”, he replied as he scanned the six faces with hazelnut eyes and a small grin. “Erik, Mr. Turrisi, always a pleasure to see you two again.”
“Arthur Grant?”—the repetition directed him towards the kitchen where Bryen lowered his emptied bottle of coke and crossed his arms. “I heard about you on a Discovery Network documentary. You’re the guy who caught Richie the Worm.”