by Nye, Laine
Brad wasn't going to allow that. Just as the guy got his feet firmly planted on the rungs, Brad lifted him up then dropped him. The guy screamed as he fell twenty feet down the shaft into unknown dank stinking darkness. The manhole cover came back down almost landing in place but not quite. The loud clanging sound drowned out all other noises.
Brad turned back toward the theater. His car was on its side. He had no transportation. No way out without it. He threw gravity under his car gently forcing it back on its wheels. He ran to the sidewalk and was climbing back in as he heard Sherry begging him to put her down. “Okay.” he said pleasantly to her and let go of the null gravity under her. She screamed as she and her friend fell. Sherry bounced off the side of the marquee and landed on the four-wheel drive and then fell off onto the sidewalk. Bill Sorenson slammed onto the marquee but Brad dragged him off that surface to drop onto the other car face down and spread eagled. He lifted his head and groaned loudly. Then his head dropped back onto the car without him moving for a long time. Neither of them got back up. Sherry was holding both her legs and rolling in pain, her cast broken. Her screaming reached a new intensity.
Brad drove down the sidewalk passed a couple of parked cars and then back onto the street. Where was Greene? He would take care of him too. Ahead of him two police cars were racing toward him. Behind him still on his left he spotted Greene's car approaching as Brad sped through 25th Street. On his immediate left was the old Ben Lomond Hotel. It was the tallest building in town at 13 stories. It was L shaped at the tower section and a section that was tucked into the L shape was only two stories high.
He slowed his car, waiting for Greene to come closer and stop. The two police cars in front of him pulled directly into his path on the wrong side of the road. Both officers jumped out with guns drawn and pointed at Brad. Brad slammed on his brakes. He knew he did not have quite enough energy left in him to leap his car over theirs. Not if he was going to stop Greene.
While they yelled commands at Brad, he turned towards Sherman Greene's patrol car that was stopping. He could see Greene was holding his shotgun with his right hand. With deliberate intent, his spine started tingling, and he lifted Greene's car completely off the road. It flew forward until it was parallel with the hotel. Then Brad threw gravity onto the 2nd floor roof, and Sherman Greene found his car floating up and sideways to the roof top of the lower section.
Brad dropped the car in such a way that the car bounced onto its side. Greene was slammed tight up against the door in his car totally shaken at what had just happened. He looked around. There was no way to get his car down off this roof. He stood up, feet on the driver side door and threw his shotgun over the side of the passenger window. Climbed up to the passenger side and crawled out the window and jumped off his car. He ran over to the roof edge after he grabbed his shotgun. There was no way down.
The city streets were jammed on every side because of stopped police cars and those who were watching the drama. Other officers were trying to get to the scene but could not get through the snarled traffic. Below him, on the street, Greene could see Brad obeying the commands of the two officers in front of him whose guns were aimed at Brad. Brad got out of his car and held his hands in the air. Greene cocked his shotgun and pointed it at Brad. But he was not in a position to shoot. He was too far away for the gun to kill Brad. Brad was ordered to turn around, kneel and put his hands behind his head.
But Brad had not calmed down in the least yet. These two officers, though only doing their job, were endangering his life just like the others in the car chase had been doing. If they arrested him, he knew he would never make it out of Ogden alive. Placing gravity into their cars, he lifted them up and threw them backwards until they slammed into the windshields of their cruisers. Brad turned to his right, towards the old municipal building that once housed the courts, jail and police station of Ogden. He turned the opposite way and saw Greene at the roof's edge behind and to his left. The old courthouse was eleven stories tall and a good place for Brad to retreat to safety. He could not take on the entire Ogden police force. Neither was he going to be taken in so he ran to the sidewalk and onto the grass heading for the old building.
Several police had parked their cars behind the old courthouse and ran through its short corridor to the front. It was a much-needed shortcut for them as the streets around the crises area were hopelessly blocked with rubberneckers; people who wanted to see all of the action. These cops were pouring out the front door and running down the steps towards Brad. Brad was heedless of them approaching him. He ran full on towards them, then jumped into the air, and kept going up. He crossed over the heads of two men in suits who were grabbing for their shoulder holsters as he went over them. The null gravity field picked them up and they found themselves drifting up, following Brad. These two detectives were having great difficulty keeping themselves upright as they struggled with no gravity around them. They looked like two astronauts slowly tumbling in outer space.
Brad reached the level of the roof. He could hear cars honking below. Sirens were coming from every direction towards the old station. People were yelling and stopping their cars. Everyone had their eyes on Brad and the two detectives.
Brad paid no attention to any of these distractions. He concentrated on the roof and pulled himself over to it and touched down. He noticed that the two men were unintentionally following him to the roof top, and he did not want to drop them as they were now about eight stories up. He kept them coming up to his level but would not let them be pulled onto the rooftop with him. He decided that these two detectives might be able to help him out of his dilemma. The old courthouse was quickly being surrounded by officers on foot and Brad had nowhere to go. Maybe if he could talk to these two there still might be a way out.
Their guns were out, pointed at him. “Set us down carefully on the roof with you,” one of them said. The other was too much in shock over these bizarre circumstances to absorb all that was happening. But the one who had spoken knew that it was Brad that somehow brought them up off the ground.
“Come on son. Let us up on the roof or we'll be forced to shoot,” the detective added.
“You're forced to shoot, and I'm forced to drop you!”
There was indecision written into the man's face. He was used to being in control when confronting a suspect. He had no control now.
“Let us talk with you.” They were still having trouble keeping upright and not turning slowly away from their suspect in the non-gravity field.
“Throw your guns out of my gravity field that you are in first.” Brad said.
“No way. A cop never gives up his gun.”
“Then we're finished talking Brad said. He began to let them fall at full speed. They were yelling on their way down. He stopped them about halfway down and brought them back up. “Throw your weapons away!” Brad demanded again.
“We can't do that. They could go off when they hit. Someone could be hurt.”
“No one seems to mind hurting me. Unload them first and toss them now!”
“All right, all right. Hang on a second.” Both men pulled the clips from the guns and threw them aside. They pulled the slide back on their guns and the last bullet popped out the side and began floating next to them. They then tossed their guns away. The silent one was now floating face down and was struggling in the air. “Okay, now bring us over to the roof with you, so we can talk.”
“We'll talk with you staying right there,” Brad retorted.
“Then come to the edge so we don't have to yell to talk.”
“So your buddies on the ground can shoot me? No way. I’ll stay right here!” Brad told them.
“Okay. Now look kid...”
“I'm not a kid and I'm not your son.”
“Alright, fine. Your name is Brad Shaw according to the info we have had coming in. For the past 3 days you have been generating all kinds of reports for us to read. Until you pulled us up here with you; Until I saw that car over there on the hote
l, I didn't believe a word that I was reading. How do you do this?”
Brad ignored the question. “I’m not the bad guy here.” Brad told them. “I need you to know that. There are several people who have been trying to kill me. All I have done is defend myself.”
“Okay. That's fine Brad. Everyone has a right to defend himself. We should all go over to the station to talk. Not out here in front of everyone.”
“No way!” I'm letting you stay up here with me for now because I need you to know I haven't done anything wrong.”
“You killed someone under a boulder this afternoon according to reports out of North Ogden. You also put several people in the hospital last night at the college, and the night before that, you somehow assaulted a girl. Now there are cars and people smashed up against the front of the Egyptian. You have done some bad things Brad.”
“No! That's not how any of it happened! You are wrong!”
“Fine. Then you tell us how it happened.”
“I don't have enough time, and I can't keep holding you guys up here with me. This was a mistake.”
“Then just bring us over to the roof so we can talk. Can't you see my partner is scared to death of heights?”
“If I let you onto this roof with me, you'll try to overpower me. I'm not stupid.”
“Look Brad, the longer you resist arrest, the worse this thing gets. You are already in trouble for assaulting those two officers when you slammed them into their cars along with everything else I mentioned. How many more crimes are you willing to be charged with? Are you aware that you were photographed in North Ogden this afternoon? A photographer sent some pictures of you and your friends floating in the air! He also has a shot of a boulder that crushed a man to death. He says you caused that boulder to fall on the man."
"Those guys were shooting at us. They tried to kill us! What did you want me to do? Stand real still so it wouldn't hurt getting shot?"
"No. I know you were trying to get away from those guys. The photographer told us that. But there is hard evidence of these weird things you have been doing to us and others and we know you have been hurting some people. We have to take you in with us."
“I can't hold you guys up here any longer and this conversation is going nowhere. I thought if I talked with you, you would see I'm not the bad guy here. But I can see it's a waste of time.”
“Please don't drop us son, I mean Brad.” We've done you no harm.”
Brad could near some noise on the rooftop behind him. He turned to look and saw a metal roof access that was being forced open. He turned to the two detectives. “You have been trying to distract me so they could grab me from behind. I can't trust you.”
He let them fall back to the ground until just before they hit then slowed them down and dropped them mostly uninjured. At the same time, he increased the gravity over the hatch in the roof and made it ten times heavier than it was. No one was coming through to get him!
Brad heard a helicopter coming from the south. He turned to look and saw that it was a news helicopter from out of Salt Lake City where all the local stations did their broadcasting. The chopper was coming in low and slow so as to get a good shot of Brad on the roof.
As it flew slowly over him, it blew a lot of dirt up into Brad's face and then it passed over the rooftop. It flew over to the Ben Lomond Hotel to shoot video of the police car on the lower roof. Passing over the roof of the hotel, it swung around in a loop speeding up for a few seconds to come over Brad again. Then slowed back down. It continued to circle in this pattern repeatedly. The occupants were trying to film everything they could.
Several long minutes of indecision later, Brad heard a searing noise and looked over at the roof hatch. The flame of a cutting torch was burning its way through the steel. Brad knew it was only a matter of time before they cut their way through.
The hatch was cut open. The steel plate dropped inside the building past the cops who were working on a ladder to get access to the roof. The officer who was lower down on the ladder held a large rag dripping wet with cold water. He handed it up to his partner. The officer at the hatch ran the cold cloth around the cut edge of the hole so that it would cool down enough for them to be able to emerge onto the roof without getting burned.
The chopper was coming close and Brad, now thoroughly exhausted again, knew he had one chance to get away or be captured. He concentrated with all his might and watched the chopper as it slowly came close again. At the moment he thought would be the best timing, he leaped into the air and flew up to the chopper's landing skids and grabbed hold of one of them. Due to the momentum of the chopper, though it wasn't going that fast, as he caught it he was immediately sliding toward the back end of the rail. Holding on desperately, he threw a leg over the rail as well which stopped him at the rear support his leg was bruised painfully, but he held on.
Inside the cockpit, they watched in horror as Brad rose up to meet them. They felt the jolt and a dipping of the helicopter to the right as Brad grabbed hold. They were speechless. They did not know how to react. The chopper carried him across the highway on its same pattern. When it flew over the hotel, Brad let go just when he could see that the people on the ground could not see him with the roof top blocking their view. He would have fallen all the way to the ground from where he had let go, but instead he made a diagonal descent toward the rooftop using up the last bit of energy he had while focused on the roof. He landed roughly on the roof falling down skidding across the rough surface.
He jumped up immediately and ran for the shelter he was seeing. An old large air conditioner unit had been replaced with a new one. The old one and its shell were still on the roof. Brad ran to the shell and dove under it to get out of sight from the helicopter. If things went well, the chopper passengers would think he let go over the street that was below, which in fact he did. The people below would have seen him leap onto the landing skid of the chopper. They would not know where he had fallen down to. They would believe he was behind the hotel. It would buy him some time.
Inside the chopper, they felt the sudden lightening of their load when Brad let go. They could not see behind them but knew they were well passed the hotel before he had let go.
“He can't survive that fall.” The pilot said, “We are 150 feet above the ground.”
“He can if he floats down the same way he floated up to meet us.” The cameraman shouted.
The news reporter in the rear of the copter said, “We have to circle around and see if we can spot him on the ground.”
The helicopter swung back on a tight axis with everyone on board looking down at the street behind the hotel trying to see Brad. They could not spot him anywhere on the ground. Police cars forced their way to the back of the hotel to find Brad.
It was dusk. Brad had spent the entire day running from one group or another! The helicopter came over several more times still filming everything that was happening. Still searching for Brad. This went on for some time.
Brad retrieved the cell phone his dad had given him from his pocket. He dialed his dad's cell number and his dad picked up immediately. “I have been calling you but you didn't answer. Where are you Brad?” His father asked. “I'm in town looking for you.” I heard all the commotion on the news and I figured it had to be about you. I came immediately.”
“I'm on the Ben Lomond Hotel. I'm under a big piece of tin so that I can't be seen, but I don't know how long it will be before they discover me.” “You're at Ben Lomond Suites? Alright Brad. Listen to me. I want you to turn your phone off for five more minutes, so they can't get a fix on you calling my number. I will call you in five minutes, so have your phone back on by then. I am parking the car a couple of blocks away because that is as close as they will let me get. I'll come to you on foot. Hang up now.” The phone went dead. Brad turned his off like he had been told.
Five minutes later, he turned it back on. A few seconds later the phone rang. He answered, “Dad?”
“Yeah, it's me. Come to th
e back of the hotel and help me up.” It was dark now. Steve thought that he might be able to get up to Brad without being seen. The chopper had pulled off and landed behind the old police station so the crew could pile out and find people to interview. The police cars had left to patrol a larger perimeter for their elusive suspect.
Brad crawled out of his hiding place and ran to the back of the roof. In the dark he could just make out his dad 13 stories below waving at him. Brad used what little energy he had built back up to bring his father up from the ground and place him on the roof with him. They stepped up close and hugged.
Chapter 11
On the second story roof of the hotel, Sherman Greene spent a long time trying to find a way own off the building. It was going to be a little awkward trying to explain why his car from North Ogden Police was in Ogden and sitting on a roof top. He finally decided to break a window and climb into the hotel. He had watched the chopper fly over with Brad hanging on to the bottom. When the chopper circled again, he saw that Brad was gone.
He thought about it a long time. He hoped that Brad had transferred over to the same building that Greene was stranded on, and he was going to go find out. He broke a window out with his shotgun barrel and climbed into a hotel room that fortunately was not occupied at the moment. He figured that most of the rooms were probably unoccupied as everyone would be outside watching the unfolding drama. He left his shotgun outside the window on the roof as he didn’t want to be observed carrying it through the halls of the hotel. He knew that could get him unwanted attention that would ultimately interfere with his plan. Making his way out into the hallway, he quickly found the elevator and pushed for the thirteenth floor. Once there, he would find out how to get onto the roof.
“Are you alright son?” Steve asked. “Have you been shot or anything?”
“I'm okay Dad. I'm hungry, thirsty and tired but mostly just scared. I don't know what to do next.”
“Brad, I have been driving around this area for the last 20 minutes trying to figure out where you are. It's only a matter of time before they find you on this roof.”