Apex

by Moon, Adam

  Dan looked downright terrified as they waited. He knew he was a ticking time bomb just waiting to happen. Jack knew how he felt. Jack’s was the only ability that was impossible to explain. Somehow he was able to vanish from existence and then reappear elsewhere. He had no idea how he was doing it.

  Burning things was scientifically easy to duplicate. You could move objects without touching them physically in science too via magnets. Force fields were in the early stages of development but they were technically feasible. That left Jack’s ability which was still only in the theoretical realm of science. Some scientists still thought it was impossible to teleport anything large enough to measure.

  The notion that Jack’s ability was technically impossible made him uneasy, even fearful.

  Then again, they all appeared to be indestructible, which was also technically impossible so maybe he wasn’t as alone in this as he felt.

  Before they could go outside, everyone turned on Jack and stared at him incredulously. Only then did he notice he was hovering a foot from the floor. The room shimmered around him, but he doubted the others saw it the same way he did because they weren’t vanishing and reappearing instantaneously like he was. They weren’t affected.

  When Dan rushed out the back door, it caused enough excitement and anxiety in the room to disrupt his concentration and he fell to the floor suddenly. He was glad for it. He didn’t like being stared at like he was a freak, especially by a roomful of freaks.

  The kitchen window glowed orange as the sky outside lit up from Dan’s emission of heat.

  A Sign

  General Parsons knew their search was over when he saw the sky light up to the north of town. Something strange was going on out there.

  He radioed the men to head north but to stay out of sight until they all rendezvoused and came up with a plan of attack.

  Failure

  The session was a mess and a failure. Their aim had gotten much worse and their powers more unruly. But the magnitude of their powers had increased exponentially in a way the doctor had a hard time quantifying. Dan’s heat had sucked so much of the oxygen from the surrounding air that he almost passed out. After he fully came to his senses, the teenagers showed just how erratic their powers were.

  Melanie tried to make one of the scattered soda cans levitate but instead she lifted a clump of earth the size of a car. When she tried to drop it, it crushed into itself, making a sickening squelch sound as brown mud oozed from it. By the time it fell to the ground, it was only as big around as a pumpkin and it was hard as stone.

  Scott’s force field appeared twenty feet from where he wanted it to. But it had showed them a new terrifying aspect of what it could do. It could cut through anything if it wasn’t positioned just right, and not just soggy tree roots. They noticed a large chunk of Dan’s pick-up truck floating in the air, cleaved through at an angle. There was a concave slice of truck simply missing and floating in the air above it. Just as they were able to make out the perfect cross-section and the inner workings of the engine, Scott’s force field gave out and it came crashing back down on the rest of the truck.

  If Dan was pissed, he hid it well.

  Jack might have decided against adding to the debacle but he had to unleash the raw power growing inside him. He knew he’d made a mistake when he allowed it to all rush out at once.

  Everyone stumbled backwards, away from him, as he let his abilities shine through. There were disbelieving and fearful looks on their faces as they backed away, flickering before his eyes.

  The scenery changed in an instant, and he was no longer on Earth. He tried to gasp, out of fear, but there was no oxygen where he was. There was no ground beneath his feet either. He saw the curvature of the Earth and realized he was somewhere in Earth’s orbit. Technically he was in space. He knew from movies that his eyeballs should’ve bolted out of his head and his lungs should’ve bubbled out of his open mouth, but neither of those things happened. He also knew he would freeze to death instantly, but that didn’t happen either. If he wasn’t so terrified, he might’ve wondered if movies about the vacuum of space were nonsense. But he was terrified. He was going to die if he couldn’t muster the power to teleport and the truth was, he still didn’t know how he was doing it. What if he couldn’t do it anymore?

  He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate but the fear and the lack of oxygen were distracting him. He felt no motion and yet he imagined he was moving. Was he in orbit, freefalling, or was he falling away from the Earth. If he was moving away from Earth, he would die and his perfectly preserved body would travel the stars for millions or billions of years.

  That thought sent a new wave of panic through him. He tried to focus on something familiar but every image that flashed through his mind was so disjointed and ethereal that he couldn’t latch on.

  Then a picture of Melanie’s face crossed his mind, and in the next instant he felt solid Earth beneath his feet. His vision went wonky but he’d done it. He felt air rush and slam against his body like it had missed him dearly. Melanie and Scott rushed forward and grabbed him before he fell over. He gulped down a thick lungful of air and waited for his knees to stop shaking.

  The doctor approached carefully and asked him where he’d gone.

  “I went to space.”

  “Bullshit,” Scott said. “You must’ve bumped your head or something.”

  The doctor added, “The vast change in pressure from here to there and back again would surely cause some form of the bends but in reverse. Do you feel alright?”

  Jack said, “Well, I wasn’t there for long. Plus I’m indestructible.”

  The doctor shook his head in confusion. “You’re not indestructible, Jack. From what I can tell, you’re all just physically impervious. That doesn’t mean you can’t die.”

  Jack knew that. He just wanted the doctor to give him a break until he could get his terror under control.

  Melanie asked, “So, what is space like?”

  “It sucks. There’s nothing to affect you up there. Nothing can be touched or felt. You can’t inhale. I didn’t like it. It’s empty. All I could think about was getting back here, and for a second I worried that I couldn’t.” His body started to shiver again, and Melanie held him tight, reassuringly.

  Jack left out the part about how the only way he’d managed to get back home was by imagining her face. He thought that might be perceived as inappropriate. But it wasn’t really his fault. She was the only girl his age he’d been around in over a week. It was infatuation via desperation. At least, he hoped that was all it was.

  Disobeying Orders

  The general was huddled with his men behind a hedgerow at the perimeter of the farmhouse. They’d seen the boy, Jack appear out of thin air as if by magic. They watched as the three teenagers and the man the general had met at the convenience store went back into the house, followed by Doctor Henshaw.

  The general ordered, “Reconvene at the Humvees. I have a serious decision to make.”

  It would be easy enough to reduce that crappy, wooden farmhouse to splinters with the proper air support, but it would be just as easy to use the element of surprise to take out all of its occupants with a strong and determined ground force, which was exactly what the general had at his disposal.

  The men muttered under their breaths. They were all itching to put this behind them and get back to base but the general knew what he was doing. He’d make the right decision.

  At the vehicle, General Parsons radioed Fort Carson for an air strike but because it was such an unusual request to call for such a thing on American soil, he was put on hold while his superiors were contacted for confirmation.

  The general knew exactly what that meant. It meant it could be over an hour before he got the go-ahead, if he got it at all. That wasn’t the only thing that pissed him off. He was a revered General and yet he’d been assigned to hunt down a handful of punk kids in this dirt-bowl of a town. His pride had taken a beating with the realization that his
superiors still considered him a grunt, despite his stripes. But this was the last straw.

  The lack of decisiveness only served to enrage him. Why was he the man on the ground if he couldn’t make the necessary decisions?

  He yelled into the radio, “Forget it then. I’ll handle this myself.”

  The men all whooped at that statement and the general yanked the cord from the receiver out of the Humvee console angrily.

  Ambush

  Molly was excitable when they came inside. She had just finished taking in their costumes. She handed them out, and then said, “I almost forgot to make you guys some masks. What’s the point in a costume if the bad guys know who you are?” She handed them each a flimsy eye mask that made them look like cartoon bank robbers.

  Then she walked over to Dan and handed him a brown paper parcel.

  He rolled his eyes and laughed. “I hope you made yourself one as well because I’m not going to embarrass myself alone.”

  “Of course I made myself one. Mine was the first one I made.”

  Dan ripped his parcel open and held up the costume. It was red with a yellow flame on the chest. “This is the best one yet.” He wrapped his wife in a bear hug as she giggled like a school girl.

  All three friends put their costumes on. None of them admitted to the others that they were each excited to see how they turned out. Molly was some kind of wunderkind with a needle and thread. She’d cinched the suits up perfectly. The masks turned out to be a nice touch too.

  They traipsed back towards the living room to show off their perfectly fitted costumes when all hell broke loose.

  When the doctor fell over on his face, dead, they knew they’d been discovered by the general and his overzealous men.

  Dan took a shot to the stomach, but instead of the bullet simply bouncing away, it left a huge purplish yellow welt before it fell to the floor at his feet. He screamed out in pain, but he’d live.

  So they weren’t impervious; they were just tough. That was bad news given the circumstances. What if one of them got shot by a high powered rifle, or got blasted by a grenade?

  The teenagers rushed out back as Molly tended to her injured husband.

  A million miles above the Earth

  The Earth spun lazily beneath their ship, oblivious to the attack that was about to render its apex species extinct. They were four times further away than the moon so there was little chance the Earthlings would spot them, even if they somehow knew to look.

  Commander Davok ordered, “Send the mowers, then the microbe poppers, and then wake the troops. Do it in that order.”

  The microbe poppers would eradicate viruses, harmful bacteria, and other tiny creepy crawlies that could weaken or even kill their invading forces. No warrior wanted to be taken down by something as innocuous as an invisible microbe. That was no way to go out. Not all alien microbes could harm them, but there were a handful of cases where it had happened and the results were horrific.

  The mowers would cut down anything over a couple of feet tall, but the mowers used amplified energy that only shot out in straight lines, and because planets are curved, thousands were necessary to get the job done.

  Plenty of animals would die besides the humans but that was ok. As long as enough survived to supply a food source for the coming colony, then the rest were expendable. Since a bulk of the livestock and wildlife lived far away from the population centers, they’d mostly remain intact.

  Davok watched as his second in command loosed the mowers. They shot away silently towards the planet. Next he sent the cylindrical virus poppers that would detonate about a hundred meters from the ground; low enough in the atmosphere to have an immediate effect but high enough to be picked up by the winds to adequately disperse.

  It always amazed the commander how quietly and languidly a planetary invasion began. There was no fanfare or grand show of force. That would come later when the humans stood no chance at defending themselves from his troops.

  He added, “Wake up the cadets when you wake the troops. I want them to witness this one.”

  Fillo smiled impishly. “It’ll be good experience for them to see a successful invasion.”

  “They can watch from below deck. I don’t want those punks anywhere near me.”

  “That’s fine by me. They haven’t seen a real slaughter yet, and I know they’re disappointed about that.”

  “Well this invasion should satisfy their bloodlust.”

  “I agree.”

  Denver, Colorado

  Everyone watched in horror as the twenty foot tall, arrow shaped device fell from the sky and stuck in the road like a dart.

  Several small pops issued overhead as a faint mist fell upon them but they were too preoccupied by the cylindrical device before them to pay any attention to the microbe poppers deploying above their heads.

  People divided themselves into two groups at that point; those dumb enough to approach it out of curiosity and those smart enough to run away. But running wasn’t going to save anyone today.

  The device hummed electronically and then it transformed before their eyes. Several spindly legs emerged from the body. A few people thought that it might start to run around on those legs, but instead, the legs jammed into the road and stuck. The legs moved but only to reposition the arrow shaped device into a perfectly upright stance.

  The unmistakable sound of metal on metal signaled the first car crash just up the block. A window of one of the nearby jewelry stores smashed as looters eager for just such a perfect opportunity took advantage of the confusion. A woman was knocked to the ground by a man trying desperately to escape whatever this alien machine was about to do to them. A single bullet ricocheted off of the metallic body and hit a teenager on a bike, who then cried out in pain and peddled away as though his life depended on it.

  Dogs barked and people mumbled.

  Then the contraption moved again. A single metal rod, about a foot long emerged from the body about two feet from the ground.

  Before anyone knew what to make of it, it spun around the cylindrical body slowly. It picked up speed like a miniature helicopter rotor. Then the legs that had stuck into the ground began to gyrate up and down wobbling the cylindrical object so that it spun around, tracing out a cone shape in the air.

  Suddenly, a bright ray of light, like a laser beam, came from the spinning rod. The rod spun around for several seconds and then stopped abruptly. The laser light turned off. The metallic legs stopped pumping up and down and the cylinder stood stock still. The confused faces of the spectators quickly turned to panic as they realized they’d been cut in half. Then their expressions fell as their bodies fell too.

  Building crumbled and crashed to the ground burying a population that never saw this coming.

  The Rocky Mountains rumbled from having just been cleaved through several times. Landslides subsided as the great mountain range settled once more, an inch shorter than just a minute ago.

  Unleashing their Powers

  The teenagers weren’t hopped up on sugar but the adrenaline surge more than made up for that inconvenience. Jack teleported a trooper away. If anyone asked him later where he’d sent him, he’d lie. The truth was that he didn’t know where he’d sent the man, and that scared him half to death. What if he’d teleported him into the corona of the sun, or onto Mars, or into the center of the Earth?

  Scott used his force field to cut another soldier in two. It was far more gruesome than any of them had anticipated and the man’s screams only fueled the fury in his fellow soldiers as he bled to death, his lower body having been deposited thirty feet away from his torso.

  Scott tried to rush forward and help the dying soldier. He was panic stricken. Clearly he hadn’t meant to actually hurt him. But Jack held him back until Scott regained his senses. Rushing into the line of fire would be certain death.

  Melanie disarmed a man with her telekinesis but it wasn’t as easy as it looked in the movies. His trigger finger was yanked off violently as
the gun whipped away from him with exaggerated force. Blood gushed an arc in the air before the soldier realized what happened and got behind cover, holding his injured hand to stave off the blood loss.

  Jack got hit in the thigh with a round. The pain was far more intense than he imagined it would be, given the fact that he was super tough. He rubbed it vigorously, trying his best to keep from screaming out in pain.

  Melanie stood in between Jack and the soldiers and redirected every bullet that came their way. One of the bullets hit a soldier right in the eye socket and he fell away from view behind the hedgerow he had taken cover behind. He didn’t reemerge so that could mean only one thing.

  Scott had a guy sealed inside a force field. The guy was shooting wildly, wondering why all of his rounds were pinging off of an invisible barrier just a few feet in front of him. But despite the futility of his hail of bullets, he kept it up, desperate to kill one of the teenagers.

  And then the general came into view. Jack stood erect at the sight of the man. His angular features no doubt inspired respect in his men, but they inspired hatred in Jack. The general was an uncompromising, unthinking fool with murder on his mind. He had traveled to their home town with armed men, harassed people he knew and loved, just so he could kill Jack and his friends. The general was the worst human being Jack had ever met.

  He consciously decided to teleport him somewhere awful. He would teleport him ten thousand feet up and then watch him fall to his death.

  But before he was able to do anything too drastic, one of the general’s men yelled out, “Cease fire. General, you’re going to want to hear this.” He held out his radio for the general to take.

  The general did a double-take at his soldier but he relented, saying, “Weapons down, men. This had better be good.”