Impact

by Steven Whibley

  Colin stopped his joking and asked, “What are you talking about?”

  That’s when the man appeared on the hood of the car.

  CHAPTER 6

  I jolted in my seat, spilling my Coke.

  But I knew now what was going on.

  A vision.

  The man who wasn’t really on the car crouched low, staring at me with steely gray eyes. In my vision, his dark hair fluttered in a wind that blew it back. It should have blown forward if he really was on the hood of a car. I glanced at his clothing—gray also. Some kind of coverall like mechanics wear, but this looked fancier, like it fit him really well. He had broad shoulders. The patches on the chest and shoulders made it look like some kind of military uniform. I didn’t recognize him and tried to spot a name tag, but didn’t see one. A small, dark mustache made a line over a wide mouth, with lines in its corners indicating that he probably smiled a lot. I couldn’t tell if he was dark-skinned or light—the gray washed out everything. But I knew I’d never forget his sharp eyes or that strong, hawk-like nose.

  It felt like a full minute passed while we stared at each other. I knew it was only a few seconds, and he couldn’t really see me. I was seeing a death that should never happen. Bit by bit, he began to twist. I hated this part of the vision—the part where I saw how he would die.

  His shoulder dropped. One of his legs jerked forward in an impossible way. His arms twisted back. I flinched. But the vision kept going. I couldn’t stop it. And I was unable to look away. The vision held me locked in its gray swirls. The man’s mouth opened, slowly at first, but soon his lips spread wider than any human mouth should. His uniform burst into flames and fell away, showing burnt skin and charring bone. I was glad I couldn’t smell the fire.

  The man started burning to death right before my eyes. I choked back a scream while he let out an inhuman noise. A terrible shriek, lost and begging. I shuddered, feeling like an animal made of ice had clamped its teeth around my spine. The man vanished. I closed my eyes tight.

  Slumping in my seat, I let out a shaking breath. I could feel everyone’s stare hot on my skin. I knew even Archer was shooting me glances while he drove. From the backseat, Lisa touched a hand to my shoulder. “Is it over?”

  I nodded, turned around, and opened my eyes, “Yeah, it’s—” My words caught in my throat.

  Every single time I’d had a vision so far, the world turned back to color again when the vision ended. As I stared at Colin and Lisa, both of them looked entirely gray. I jerked my head back and looked at Archer. I was about to ask him what was going on when I saw pain twist his face and darken his eyes. He gripped the steering wheel with one hand and stared straight ahead.

  I followed his gaze and saw the gray-washed people on the streets. I gasped. “Are they all—?”

  Archer said, his voice tight, “How many do you see?”

  “At least a dozen,” I whispered.

  I recognized almost everyone. They were people I’d seen around Abbotsford. However, I was having a really hard time focusing. The people began to twist. Just like the guy on the hood, they burst into flames. The screams hit my ears—too many voices all at once. Agony. Death. I pressed my palms to my ears, but it didn’t muffle the sound that ripped through me.

  And then it was over. I let my hands drop. My heart thudded, dull and fast. Color melted back into the world around us.

  I breathed in.

  Breathed out.

  I straightened in my seat and stared at my hands and the dashboard, unwilling to look outside. At least I could see color in the car again. “There had to be … at least a dozen people.”

  “That’s all you saw?” Archer said. “I saw thirty-three.”

  “That many?” Colin gasped.

  Archer pulled to the side and held up his phone. “Pull up the countdown app on your phones. Set your timers, guys. We have twenty-four hours until we have a disaster on our hands. Dean, you saw something else before I did. Tell me about it.”

  “I didn’t recognize him. I don’t think …” Bile came up into my mouth. I swallowed it back, pressing on, and said, “He died like everyone else. Burned.”

  Lisa gasped.

  Archer slipped his phone into a holder on his dash and touched an icon on the screen. A moment later, the woman we’d seen in an earlier video appeared.

  “Sarah, I just—”

  “We know,” she said. She looked pale, but she cleared her throat and straightened. “Everyone here with the gift just had visions. We’re making a list, gathering names, and starting the usual checks. Send us the names of anyone you can ID.”

  Archer frowned, glanced at me, and asked, “Did anyone at CS have two visions? One practically on top of the other?”

  Sarah shook her head. “No. Did you?”

  “Dean did. But he says he doesn’t know the first guy. And the man in Dean’s first vision may be key to what happens to everyone else.”

  Sarah glanced my way, and I realized the video had to be two-way. She could see me. My cheeks heated. “Sorry our first chat has to be like this, Dean. I still am looking forward to meeting you, Colin, and Lisa. But please think about the man you saw. You had to have touched him at some point if you had a vision of him, but of course, maybe you didn’t realize it. Maybe it was a bump that you didn’t even notice. It happens. Consider what he was wearing. Do you remember going somewhere where people wore something similar?”

  I shook my head. I knew what I knew—and I had never met that man before. I hadn’t had the gift that long. I hadn’t been connecting with people for years and years the way Archer had. I’d never touched him. I tried to convince myself that I might have bumped into him early on after getting the gift. He might have been one of the people who’d trampled me in the Gadget Emporium all those months ago. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that that wasn’t the case at all. That I’d never touched him. And if that were true, did that make me some kind of freak? Were my visions morphing into something else? Something worse? I made a conscious effort to pull myself together.

  Sarah kept talking. “Just think about it. We’ll talk when you get here. Archer, see you in a few.” The screen blanked. Archer placed the phone in the center console and gripped the wheel with both hands.

  “Guess we’re meeting everyone after all,” Lisa said. She let out a long breath.

  “I wish I had other clothes.” The car seat squeaked as Colin shifted. “Wet jeans make me feel like I peed myself.”

  Archer snickered at him. “After what we just saw, you’re not going to be the only one needing to change when we get there.”

  Archer pulled into a two-story strip mall and stopped in an angled parking space. Graffiti swept some of the walls with bright colors over chipped plaster and exposed brick. Different colors marked each shop—bright red for a store, yellow for a laundry, and a tired drab white for a place that had gone out of business.

  Nudging Colin as we got out of the car, I said, “Not exactly the Bat Cave.”

  Colin nodded. “Not exactly a place I’d want to call home—or work.”

  Lisa caught up with us. “Did you really think it would be a secret lair?”

  Swiveling to stare at her, Colin asked, “You didn’t? I mean, super-secret society, around for centuries, the gift of visions? At the very least, we ought to be underground, right?”

  Archer stood beside a door he’d unlocked. “We have funding, but we decided a long time ago to skip the volcanic secret islands. Takes too long to get anywhere,” he said with a smile.

  He led us through a door and up a narrow stairwell.

  Worn wooden stairs creaked under our steps. Thin wood panels peeled off the walls, looking like something from my grandparents’ house. Lisa clung to a narrow rail that wobbled under her touch. I kept my hands to myself.

  We reached the top floor and looked around. A grubby beige carpet covered a long hallway with doors on either side. Light spilled out from under the doors, some with business names stenciled on them
. Archer led us to a blank, black entrance. Not that I really expected a sign. What would it say? Welcome to the Congregatio de Sacrificio. Please have a seat and a member of our secret society will be with you shortly.

  “Kinda creepy,” muttered Colin, taking it all in. He ran a finger down one of the dingy walls and wiped his hand on his jeans.

  Archer stopped by the door. “We try to keep operating expenses to a minimum. You never know when you’re going to have to walk away from a place on short notice, but there has been talk for some time of moving.”

  Colin shook his head. “Be hard to get worse. I’ve seen tent cities with less dirt.”

  Archer smiled and led us inside.

  We stepped into a large open area with more office doors. The place buzzed like a hornet’s nest that had been struck with a rock. People hurried out of other offices, talking on phones, and calling out to one another. A woman behind a reception desk just inside the doorway greeted us. “Welcome back to the circus, Archer.”

  “Thanks, Doris. I’ll get my chair and whip and prepare to enter the lion cage. But first you better meet Dean, Lisa, and Colin. Guys, this is Doris. She’s our main tech and the person to see if you need any information.”

  Doris wiggled her fingers at us, her flowered blouse fluttering as she moved. She had her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, kind of like Lisa, except Doris’s hair stayed slicked back. She was pretty with kind of a round face. She looked like the cool aunt who brings you great presents for your birthday instead of showing up with socks. She was also calm. She barely noticed the noise and people around her.

  Her phone rang, but instead of answering it, she turned to the three of us. “I’m really sorry about today. I’m waiting for word from the hospital, and as soon as I have it, I’ll let you guys know.”

  Lisa grabbed my arm and dug her fingernails in. “You mean Mrs. Yamada’s still alive?”

  Doris nodded. “Paramedics had to restart her heart twice. But she made it to the hospital, and doctors were working on her as of a few minutes ago.”

  Lisa turned to me. “I thought you said—”

  “I did.” I turned away from Lisa.

  She looked to Archer with an almost pleading expression. I knew she wanted him to tell us that we had really saved Mrs. Yamada. I also knew we had missed the time we had to save Mrs. Yamada. The doctors might have her body on all kinds of life support, but when they stopped that, her body wouldn’t be able to hang on. I knew she had already left this world.

  “Let’s not think about it too much, Lisa,” Archer said.

  “Archer!” I turned and saw Sarah Pickett walking toward us.

  Archer nodded to us. “Sarah, meet Dean, Colin, and Lisa.”

  She stopped before each one of us, taking one hand between both of hers and taking her time in just holding our hands. It was a little weird. But she had a nice smile and seemed glad to see us. “Great to have you three on the team. Sorry we couldn’t have a better orientation, but I promise we’ll do that just as soon as we get this latest disaster under control.”

  “Where are we with that?” Archer asked.

  “We’re pulling in extra teams from all over the district, and even the districts around us.” She gestured us forward and spoke as we followed her. “We’ve identified at least one employee from Abbotsford Airfield, so we’re certain whatever is going to happen will be at the air show. It has to be there. We have other issues, though. Dean, you’re the only one who had two visions. You’ve got to identify the man in your first one. His death comes before anyone else’s, so he’s got to be the key to saving the others. If we save that one man, we might not have to try and save what seems like up to a few hundred people.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “Save the pilot, save hundreds?” I muttered.

  Doris set me up in a tiny office with a thin tablet computer. Archer had asked her to show me the image of every pilot and performer at the air show and photos of all the employees as well. My eyes were ready to cross permanently.

  “You’ll do fine,” Doris said. She brought me a cold soda. So, while Sarah and Archer showed Colin and Lisa around the CS, I got to sit and look at image after image. Guys smiling, women waving, mechanics in grainy group shots beside airplanes … you name it, I saw it.

  I kept swiping the screen and getting more and more frustrated. “Where are you?” I asked the mystery man. And what if he wasn’t a pilot at the air show? What if he was some guy who just flew a private Leer in from somewhere and would crash into one of the air show planes? I swiped again, saw another face, swiped again, saw another face. I swiped again—and almost knocked over my drink.

  I’d found him.

  The guy with the strong nose and sharp eyes stared back with a grin full of confidence. I’d been right. He did smile a lot.

  I let out a yell. “It’s him!”

  A half dozen people rushed in, including Archer. Jumping to my feet, I pointed at the screen. “That’s him. That’s the guy in my vision.”

  Archer pulled out his phone and tapped a couple of icons. The same image came up on his phone. He held it out to me. “Karl McKnight. I’ve reported him to Sarah. We need to learn everything about him and his team. Doris?” He turned and almost bumped into her.

  She glanced up from her phone. “Already on it. Flight plan, aircraft specs, his mechanics. Shoe size even. I’ll pass the info on to the other teams as it comes in.”

  I pulled out my phone and immediately started seeing information. “McKnight is Australian.” I looked at Archer. “This is his first time at the Abbotsford Air Show. When do you think I could have touched him?”

  Archer put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t waste time overthinking it. You touched him, or you wouldn’t have had the vision. You probably bumped into him at the hotel this morning, in fact. A lot of people are staying at the hot springs. Trust me, this is a good thing. We know when this disaster is going to happen, and we have an idea of who’s going to cause it. I think we can safely say McKnight is going to crash at the show. We can fix this.”

  I shook my head, and asked, “What if I’m having visions without touching someone?”

  Frowning, Archer glanced over his shoulder. Everyone else had left the room. He leaned down. “I don’t think you should say things like that. Hank isn’t the only one around here who questions your being part of the CS.”

  “You think even the freaks will think I’m a freak?”

  “Having the gift doesn’t make you a freak, Dean. Now, let’s focus on that information Doris sent on McKnight.”

  I sat down and tried to read all the stuff, but I couldn’t stop thinking about McKnight—especially about seeing him without having touched him.

  Sure, I’d been to the air show. I’d always loved it. Who wouldn’t? Old planes with four wings, modern jets, big bombers from World War II. Pilots flew stunts, flipping upside down and passing each other with what always seemed like only inches between them. Abbotsford turned its fairgrounds into a carnival with food for sale and people hawking Tshirts and hats and model airplanes. Thousands of visitors from all over the world jammed the grandstands. Sweaty, sunburned, lotion-wearing spectators with their folding chairs and screaming kids just waiting to connect with me.

  I shuddered.

  All those people meant possible connections. Possible visions. Possible deaths.

  Stop being a baby, I told myself. It’s not all on me this time. I had to start thinking about what Archer had said. And Colin. Anyone I had a vision of was already dead if we didn’t do anything. So, it was time to get out there and do something good.

  I pushed my fears into the back of my mind, but another voice rose up. Who are you kidding? You’re terrified. Yeah, I was. I wanted to be like Archer—cool and smiling and able to get things done no matter what. I bet he’d walk straight through a crowd, high-fiving everyone that he passed. Making connections and not worrying about what it might mean down the road.

  Colin burst into the room. “You
wouldn’t believe all the stuff we’ve seen!”

  Lisa came in right behind him and stared wide-eyed at me. “You all right? You look pale.”

  I shrugged. “That vision was pretty freaky.” I changed the topic and told them about finding McKnight.

  But then Lisa cleared her throat and said, “Please tell me the CS really can deal with visions like this. I mean …” She blew out a breath and muttered, “This is so bad. So many people.”

  It was easier for me to act like Archer for Lisa. “Archer’s already got it under control. You heard him mention other zones and districts.” I told them how CS teams from all over were headed here. Lisa’s shoulders eased a bit, and Colin’s eyes got bigger.

  “Boy, when they said we’d meet a few people from the CS, I was thinking, like, about five. Seems like we get to meet everyone all at once.”

  I thought about saying something about McKnight—how I was sure I had never even seen this guy before today—but Archer was right about that too. We needed to focus on saving a whole lot of people from a crash that was now due to happen—I checked my countdown—in twenty-one and a half hours.

  A text popped up on my phone from Archer.

  Meeting in the war room.

  Lisa’s phone beeped, and then Colin’s played the opening music of Star Wars. “You already changed your alerts and ring tones?” I asked.

  He lifted a brow. “I had to do something during the boring parts of the tour. Where do you think the war room is?”

  “Follow the crowd,” Lisa said, already heading for the door.

  We trailed after Lisa and three other people. We walked into a room I recognized from the video we’d seen in the car. A stab of guilt hit me again for not helping Mrs. Yamada—the right one—but I pushed it down. We had a lot of other people who needed us now. About a dozen CS people stood around the dark wooden table. Chairs had been pushed back, and charts and maps covered the table from one end to the next. The CS seemed to have a lot of tech, but I was kind of glad they used paper too. It meant I could stuff something into my pocket if I needed to.