Flashback (Out of the Box Book 23)

by Robert J. Crane

  There was no defending against what I was doing to him, though, and he didn't realize that, even as he passed out about ten seconds after I had locked in the hold. Because I wasn't actually choking him. That would have taken a minute or so, trying to get his brain to fight itself out, to lose all oxygen so he could drift into a breathless unconsciousness.

  That was too slow, and the stakes of the moment were too high. I swung him around, checking on little Sienna, who was still crying at the top of her lungs, abandoned in a cart by herself as I dealt with Jowls and mom tangled with Funky Teeth. I heard some gunshots over my shoulder and had a feeling that minus his inhuman shield, Funky Teeth was not doing so well.

  Mr. Jowls finished his struggle without even a whimper, and I stopped moving backward as his legs went dead, the threat of him overpowering me now ended. Lucky I still had a mostly intact long sleeve on this side, otherwise I would have had a chubby fellow bouncing around in my brain just now.

  I kept up the pressure, my wrist against his jugular. I hadn't choked him out – I'd cut off the blood flow to his brain via the jugular vein and carotid artery. Nothing in, nothing out, my metahuman strength the guarantor of his lack of oxygen. I didn't let go, though, spinning around to make sure my mother was okay. If she wasn't, I had a several hundred-pound sack of crap to throw at her assailant.

  She was fine, though. The 1911 in her hand was smoking, and Funky Teeth was in his death throes on the ground. His mouth was open and I finally figured out what he was.

  An Iron Tooth. He'd made it about a foot from mom before she'd dropped him, and he'd probably been going for the throat. She was retreating backward a step at a time, carefully, gun still pointed at him as Funky Teeth breathed his last.

  “Nice shooting,” I said, wrenching Mr. Jowls's neck as I altered my grip to take hold of him on both sides of the head. I didn't want him coming after us again, and since I'd never run across him in my future, I had to guess he didn't have much of one in front of him.

  I broke his neck cleanly and dropped him to the floor with a thud as my mother watched. Her face fell a little. Not much, but it was there – disappointment.

  “Sorry,” I said, “but we don't need them coming back on us later.”

  She nodded, breaking past me and going for little Sienna as I scanned the aisle ahead. There was no sign of anyone else, no sound of screaming in the distance. “I think our grocery run just got cut short,” I said, turning to find my mother pulling little me out of the cart to rest on her hip. “We should probably-”

  “Shhh,” my mother said, putting her forehead against mini me's, using her hair as a shield to her succubus powers. “Shhhhh.” She looked right at me. “Shhhh,” and I realized she was shushing me. “Do you hear that?” she asked.

  “Hear wh-”

  Then I heard it.

  It was a crashing like thunder, but the skies had been clear when we came in.

  A roaring like a tornado, but there hadn't been a cloud in sight.

  The sound of crunching metal and destruction, and I turned-

  Just in time to see a figure all in black come smashing through the freezer case behind me as cleanly as if he were a runaway train destroying anything in his path.

  And my brain clicked, and I knew – everything.

  What was happening.

  Who was after us.

  Because standing in front of me was a man clothed head to foot in metal armor that was anchored to his very skin by dint of his metahuman sticky powers. He'd stepped through the wreckage at a run and stopped in the middle of the aisle, freezer lights flickering all down the row from the damage he'd just done, the hiss of the ruined machinery crackling behind him as he stared at us through his thin eye slits.

  I stared back at him, a man I'd killed years ago...or would kill, years from now.

  “David Henderschott,” I said, and he stared at me, cocking his head in curiosity. Because when I'd met him before – years hence – I'd called him Full Metal Jackass, and he'd worked for...

  My jaw tightened.

  I lowered my head in anger.

  Because yes...now I knew beyond doubt who was after us.

  It was the same assholes who had been after me the day I left my house.

  I said in a whisper that felt like a hurricane of emotion, anger that I hadn't felt – hadn't even realized I still carried, a bitterness that had stuck with me through all the years since I'd last faced these assholes.

  “Omega.”

  12.

  Henderschott didn't waste a minute before he lunged at me, every inch of his skin covered in steel plating. “Get out of here!” I shouted to my mother as he swatted at me, trying knock me aside so he could get after her and, by extension, little me.

  I dodged out of his way on the first hit, grabbed his arm, then flung him against the fridge units against the wall. Glass shattered and milk jugs exploded as I slammed him into the display. He landed after only about a foot of swing, feet flipping up as he went over onto his back, weighed down by his armor and off balance from my attack.

  Swinging around, I found my mother already charging away, down the outside aisle behind us. She'd turned the corner, back the way Smoker Lips had come, and was sprinting along the coolers lining the outside edge of the building. We'd passed an Emergency Exit somewhere around the meat department, and hopefully she'd head for that because it'd be a hell of a lot easier to reach than the front entrance.

  I glanced back at Henderschott, who was clawing to get out of the fridge, trying to get upright again, but was like a turtle on his back. I gave a fleeting thought to killing him by caving in his metal chest while he was down but realized that would probably terminally screw up the timeline since he and I had a date with destiny in about fifteen years. Instead I sprang off my back foot and leapt into the air, reaching the top of the aisle behind me and leaping for the next immediately, a controlled jump that carried me over the space between them with ease.

  From up here I could see the entry to the store, and sure enough, it was swarming with official-looking people who were starting to head this way. I dismounted rather than jump again, coming down about twenty yards behind my mother, who was hauling ass up that outside aisle along the side of the building, heading for that emergency exit by the meat department.

  “Let's go out that door,” I said as I landed and kept sprinting. She'd ditched the cart and had little me clutched against her side, pounding furiously ahead, breathing heavy with every step as she leapt a center-aisle fridge display filled with sausage and bacon.

  I altered my course and slowed for a second as I passed the ham, grabbing a big one. We'd totally botched this grocery trip and we desperately needed something to eat, so a little shoplifting seemed like a minor thing compared to the devastation and dead bodies we'd already left in this store. I tucked the ham under my arm and headed for the exit-

  Something heavy slammed into my back between the shoulders, producing a cracking noise and pain, pain, oh the pain. I sprawled onto the ground, the ham flying from my hands and rolling away as I landed in a heap, spraining a wrist when I slammed into a floor cooler display on the way down.

  I caught a fading vision of my mother battering her way through the emergency exit ahead as I raised my head. The pain was really exquisite, at least a 7 on a 1-10 scale. Broken bone for sure, and probably a serious one, a little off the spine and to the right, between it and the shoulder blade. I thought maybe that was a rib, a high one, but whatever it was, it felt as though I'd been speared in the back in the thick cluster of muscles around my shoulder blade.

  A heavy thump sounded behind me, Henderschott cracking the floor tiles as he landed from his jump. Apparently he'd followed my leaping strategy, at least for an aisle or so, using the height of the freezer units to track me and then coming down after he'd nailed the shit out of me with his...

  I looked around for what had hit me. There was a section of black armor wedged under the fridge display, just sitting there as casu
ally as if he'd slipped it off. It was a metal plate about a foot long and kind of sharp on either side, flat in the middle where he used his powers to bond it to his skin. It looked a little like a shield, slightly curving, small at the bottom of the plate and widening as it came to the elbow joint.

  He advanced on me, and I tried to ignore the pain screaming in my back. However bad it was – and it was bad – it was only going to be so much worse if he got his hands on me. I swiped the plate with my left hand since my right side was on fire, numb tingles running down my arm to my fingertips, and rolled to my knees as Henderschott came at me.

  I raised my makeshift shield and took a major hammering as he brought down his arm. It rang out like a shot, an explosive sound of thunder echoing through the whole store. It was probably drawing Omega personnel our way even now, which didn't leave me an abundance of time to fight him off before they'd be here. And as much as I'd displayed an aptitude for slaughtering Omega personnel, now that I was injured, my combat effectiveness would fade, and one of them would score another hit to bring that number down further. It'd be a grind of attrition, a steady attack of hyenas upon the lioness until I ended up falling, which would be...so very bad for me, especially here.

  The shock of his blow rang through my whole body, rattling my already wounded back. Henderschott raised his hand again, ready to rain another attack on me.

  Fighting him from the ground as he tried to pound me like a sledgehammer was not going to be a winning formula, not with my time running short. My mother would reach the car and burn out, leaving me behind.

  And she should. Little me was a lot more important than big me at this point. Killing me here would be bad, mostly for me. Killing her would break time forever, at least according to Akiyama.

  I rolled as Henderschott swung again, dodging his attack by inches and coming to my feet on the backward roll.

  He didn't let up, though. He came at me again, and I swung my shield defensively, batting aside his blow.

  Henderschott was damned strong, probably close to my level of strength. I had an edge on him for speed, though that was diminished by my back injury.

  He swung at me again, this time using the left hand, the one he'd shed the upper portion of his wrist guard to javelin me with. He used his open palm to strike, which worked because he was wearing a black steel gauntlet.

  Henderschott swung it high, coming at me with fury I could see through the slits in his black face mask. He wasn't playing nice. Wasn't restraining himself. I'd humiliated him by smashing him into the fridge units.

  I met his attack with his shield and a devastating clang rang out. I knocked his hand aside a foot or so, and it hit the fridge unit that hemmed us in on our left. It bounced back and he grimaced. He'd struck his exposed wrist against metal.

  I saw the opening and attacked. I brought my improvised shield down on his arm, driving the hard edge into the exposed flesh. I hit him mid-forearm and he screamed as I pressed the attack, driving the edge into his flesh like a knife. A really dull knife, but still.

  He wasn't going to take that lying down, and I knew it before I sensed his reaction. A mosquito bites you, you swing for it, unthinking. Simple defense mechanism.

  I drove his wrist plate into his exposed flesh. He tried to swat me.

  Simple. Simple enough I knew it was coming before he did it.

  I dropped like someone had cut my puppet strings, and he brought his other hand around in a hard smack that would have annihilated me if I'd stayed in place for it.

  Instead, he found nothing there, all that windup and swing for nothing. I was already on the ground, and he was staggering from his unbalanced attack.

  I pulled my knees to my chin, then double kicked forward. Henderschott caught it in the chest, but it wasn't a striking move so much as a good shove. I braced my hands against the hard floor for more leverage and heaved into him with a leg press.

  Henderschott flew.

  And not a short distance, either. He hit the far back wall of the store several hundred feet away, though it took a few seconds for him to get there.

  Pain surged through my shoulder as I vaulted back to my feet. Spinning on the ball of my foot, I broke and ran, ham forgotten in my determination to get the hell out of here before any other Omega lackeys got hold of me.

  I shouldered through the emergency exit my mother had knocked off its hinges, a wild wail I hadn't even noticed in my flight emitting from a box on the door. I skirted the outside of the building at a flat sprint, cradling my right arm, which was starting to go numb. Spots were flickering in my vision.

  Reaching the front curb, I looked left to the entrance. It was swarming with people, and cop cars, and I straightened my posture and acted like a normal person, stepping off the curb and walking like I hadn't just been involved in a fracas inside that had resulted in the cops being called. I whistled a little tune under my breath to try and pretend like everything was cool, everything was casual, and everything hadn't just gone straight to hell. Just another customer shopping at the Walmart in Des Moines in 1999, nothing to see here, folks.

  I caught sight of my mother's car across the parking lot. She, too, had slowed her pace, casting looks over her shoulder, trying to be as casual as she could in her flight. No one was following her, which I considered a plus, all the attention at the front of the store and the Omega assholes all inside.

  That wouldn't last.

  I picked up the pace a little once I'd cleared the main avenue through the lot and started working my way back to my mom's car. I couldn't see her anymore because she'd disappeared to the other side to strap little me in, but I knew I had seconds before she'd be getting the eff out of here. With one eye on the entry, I stooped and broke into a low run, hustling like hell.

  The car started up as I reached its back bumper, and I practically dove to get out of the way, rising up as she skidded out of the space, missing me by about a foot. I could hear the muted wails of little Sienna in the back, still terrified. I reached for the passenger side door knob as I rose up.

  My mom hit the brakes, a squeal of the tires my reward for startling her. Also, she was pointing her gun at me.

  I rapped on the window, trying to keep one eye on the store entry behind her for activity. No one had noticed us. Yet.

  She hit the unlock button and I slipped in, shutting the door as I entered the Buick. Little me's crying had diminished in volume, now including the occasional hiccuped sob as she ran out of steam.

  “Wondered if you'd make it out,” my mother said, finishing her reverse and slamming the car into drive.

  “It's good that you were going to leave me,” I said, chucking a thumb over my shoulder. “She's definitely priority. They get me, I'm a big girl. Shit happens. They get her, it's game over for time. Let's not let that happen.”

  “Working on it,” my mother muttered as she rammed her foot onto the accelerator. The car revved up-

  And went nowhere.

  I caught the startled look from my mother as nothing happened. It was probably mirrored on my own face.

  I spun in my seat as the car angled up slightly-

  Henderschott.

  He had us by the bumper.

  “Shit-” I started as he began to lift.

  Something strange happened just then. The world seemed to skip a beat, the whine of the engine revving way up as the motion of the car's rear tires just...stopped.

  I could see the crowd at the entry to the store. Not a soul was moving.

  My mom saw it, too, out her side window. “What the hell...?” she muttered, dropping the pedal to the metal.

  The car revved higher, almost blotting out little Sienna's sudden scream. Henderschott had paused in his deadlift of the Buick, unmoving in the back window until-

  Everything seemed to break loose at once. Henderschott was left in the dust as the car broke free of him in a sudden blast of forward momentum. We sprang ahead and he stayed still, comically so, as though-

  “Froze
n,” I said, looking over my seat at him, “in time.”

  My mother cast a worried look in the rearview and must have seen the same thing I did. She hit the curb as she skidded around, out of the parking lot and onto the street, where traffic was momentarily halted, cars in motion just stopped, a strange blurring action around their wheels.

  Life resumed as my mother swung us out into the lane, bringing the Buick up to speed, nearly sideswiping a little Dodge in the process. It honked, but it didn't matter. We were already out of his way.

  “You saw that?” I asked, looking back at the Walmart parking lot as it faded from view. My mother pushed the speedometer up past sixty, then seventy.

  “Time freezing so we could get away?” She kept her eyes forward, ignoring the crying from the back seat. “Yeah. I saw it. That was Akiyama, I take it?”

  “I assume so,” I said. “That was...way too close.”

  She just nodded as she sped up, eyes glued to the road in front of us.

  We left it all behind us as we rolled at high speed away from the devastation. Away from Omega.

  For now.

  13.

  I watched out the back window, figuring my mother had the front covered. Suburban Des Moines blew past at high speed, and my mother showed no sign of stopping for any traffic lights, her grandma driving instincts safely left in the Walmart parking lot. I kept my eyes on the road behind us for the first few miles after we left the chaos at Walmart.

  No sign of pursuit behind us, I finally decided, but kept partially turned to make sure, wary eye checking the rear window every few seconds just in case. “How are you doing?” I asked little me.

  She sniffled and didn't produce a coherent answer. Instead she broke into a new round of crying, eventually getting the word, “Hungry,” out between sobs. Her face was red as a tomato, and her cheeks were saturated with tears, as was her cute little frilly dress.

  “Damn,” I said, looking to mom. “I tried to grab a ham on the way out, but it didn't go so well.”