Ghosts

by Robertson, David A. ;

“How did you do that?” his dad asked.

  “I dunno,” Cole said. “I just felt lots of energy.”

  “Cole.”

  That was the first time he had used his powers. There, in his living room, in his dad’s strong embrace. Maybe his dad knew then, even if Cole didn’t. Maybe that was why he’d done his own experiments on Cole, because of what had happened, because he thought that Cole had to be the answer to finding the cure.

  “Cole!” a sharp whisper.

  Eva. Cole’s eyes blinked open. Dr. Ament and Cameron Xavier were gone. He looked to his right to see Eva staring at him intensely. Brady was awake, too. The cure had worked. And that meant they didn’t have much time. He looked at the door, where Michael had been standing guard, and then down the hall, as far as he could see.

  Nobody was there.

  “They could be back any second,” Eva said.

  “Do you think you can get out of those straps?” Brady asked.

  “Come get me…” Cole started, but for the first time he noticed that Brady and Eva were tied down as well. Handcuffs locked around the bed rails.

  “Yeah,” Eva said, “can’t fly out of these.”

  “Fly?” Brady repeated.

  “I’ll tell you after, B.”

  “I can’t get out of these straps,” Cole said. “I’ve tried. There’s too many of them.”

  “You’ve got to try harder,” Eva said.

  “You can do it, Cole,” Brady said. “I know you can.”

  Cole closed his eyes and went back to that moment, with his dad on the carpet in the middle of the living room. He imagined his dad’s arms and legs wrapped around his body. An unbreakable hold. Then, he pushed his body to the limit. Strained harder than he ever had before. It was why he was here. This was the moment. There was only now. Just now. Muscles ripped. Veins popped. Sweat dripped from every pore. And he pushed himself more. Harder. A buckle popped. He could hear it under his bed.

  “You’re doing it,” Eva said.

  His body shook from the effort. He opened his eyes and saw red littered with black spots. Harder. More. He knew he could give more. He pictured Eva. Brady. They’d die if he couldn’t do this. Another buckle popped. He grunted through clenched teeth. Arched his back. Everything was on fire. Every inch of his body.

  Then, his body gave out.

  The sweat on his face was joined by tears. He was breathing heavily and too fast. His heart wouldn’t slow down. He could feel his hands, arms, legs, trembling. He turned to Eva and Brady.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Eva assured, her face resolute. “It’s okay.”

  “You did your best,” Brady said.

  “I just can’t…” Cole closed his eyes again, cursing himself for another failure, the one time he couldn’t afford it. He didn’t care about the panic attack. In fact, he begged for more.

  He deserved more.

  “Cole!” Eva whispered.

  “Keep your eyes shut!” Brady added.

  Cole heard footsteps down the hallway, approaching the room. They stopped.

  “What’s going on in here?”

  It was Michael’s voice. Eva and Brady didn’t respond. They must have closed their eyes too. Playing dead. Hoping, Cole figured, that Michael would leave, and he could try again. But there was no point. He couldn’t do it. Even if they had more time, which Cole was sure they didn’t. If Michael was back from wherever he’d been, that meant Xavier and Dr. Ament would be coming. They’d see Eva and Brady were better—you couldn’t hide the fact that they weren’t sick anymore, no matter how tight they shut their eyes—and, soon enough, Reynold would be let loose on them.

  Cole heard Michael cross the room and stop at his bedside, and then felt his old friend inspect the straps underneath the bed.

  “You’re trying to break out?”

  Cole opened his eyes. “I’m not just going to lie down and let everybody die.”

  “You wouldn’t, would you?” Michael stood up.

  “You shot me, kidnapped Brady…” Cole shook his head, not able to hide his disgust. “Should I go on?”

  “You forgot about the fires,” Michael said, but his lip was quivering. He was fighting back tears, just like earlier, when he was fighting back rage.

  “Michael,” Eva said, “you don’t want to do this. You can’t do this.”

  “They’ll kill my mom,” Michael said.

  “Oh Michael,” Cole said. “They’re going to kill her anyway if we don’t stop them. They’re going to kill everybody.”

  “Let us go,” Eva said.

  Michael turned to her.

  “We’ve already lost so much,” Brady said.

  “She’s all I’ve got left,” Michael pleaded. “I have to do this, I can’t…”

  “Mike,” Cole said, grabbing Michael’s attention. “Do you remember what I said, back in the clearing?”

  “We’re family…”

  “All of us,” Cole nodded. “Nobody’s going to hurt your mom. Not if you let me go.”

  Michael looked them all over, one by one. He looked them over, and then looked down the hall, as though Xavier would have something to say about it, or that he might appear at any moment.

  He knelt beside Cole. “I’m sorry. Everything I did…”

  “You didn’t have a choice,” Cole said. “I know.”

  “Promise me you’ll protect her.”

  “I will.”

  Cole felt Michael start to unbuckle the straps underneath the bed. One by one, they slid off his body. Michael worked quickly, and soon Cole was free.

  “You have to get them out of here,” Michael said. “Now.”

  “What about you?” Cole asked. “I’m not leaving without you. I told your mom—”

  “No,” Michael said. “I’ll hold them off as long as I can.”

  He loaded his rifle.

  “Michael…”

  “Go!”

  Cole could see that he wasn’t going to change Michael’s mind. He nodded at Michael, and they shared a look for a split second that said more than they could with words. Fear had led Michael to do awful things. Fear had done horrible things to Cole, too.

  He freed Brady and Eva and helped them to their feet.

  “You guys okay to walk?” Cole asked.

  They both said they could.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  The sliding doors had been left open, waiting for Xavier and Dr. Ament’s return. They went to the doorway, and stopped there. Michael was standing in the middle of the room, watching them.

  “Thank you,” Eva said.

  “Tell my mom I love her,” Michael said.

  “We’ll tell her you saved us,” Brady said.

  Cole heard voices. They ran across the hall, to the doors that led to the first floor. Raced upstairs. Cole quickly took out the guard in the hallway on the first floor. Eva picked up the guard’s rifle, and they continued on. They ran by a few stunned Mihko employees in lab coats to the back door.

  There were two guards stationed at the gate. Cole, Brady, and Eva didn’t break stride. They ran to the electric fence, and at the same time, Cole jumped and Eva flew, leaving Brady behind on the other side of the fence momentarily. They landed in front of the guards. Cole punched one out, while Eva shot the other. Cole tore the gate off, and let Brady out.

  “Ummm, holy shit,” Brady said. “You really can fly.”

  Eva shrugged.

  “We’ve got to keep going,” Cole said.

  “But how—”

  “Don’t worry,” Cole said. “She won’t tell me either.”

  They rushed through Blackwood Forest until Wounded Sky and the facility were a few hundred yards behind them. They stopped there. Brady and Eva were gasping for air, looking pale and clammy. They weren’t going to make it far like this. They’d been cured, but they hadn’t recovered.

  “Wait here,” Cole said. “Stay out of sight.”

  “What about you?�
� Brady asked.

  “No,” Eva said. “Don’t do it.”

  “I have to get Michael out of there,” Cole said.

  “They’ll kill you,” she said.

  “If I go now, they won’t be ready. I’ll get him out, and I’ll bring him home. He’s family, too.”

  “But Reynold,” Brady said.

  “I’m going to kill him.” Cole pictured his dad, his mom, and everybody else who had died by Reynold’s hands. He pictured the white headstones in Wounded Sky Cemetery. Maggie. Ashley. Alex. The chains Reynold had strung through the school’s door handles. “It’s the only way Wounded Sky will be safe again.”

  “Be careful,” Brady said, relenting.

  Eva threw her arms around Cole’s neck, pressed her lips against his, and in the desperation of the moment, he didn’t want her to move. But she did. She got down from her tiptoes and looked up at him in his breathlessness. In hers.

  “You know what I’m going to say,” she said.

  “But I want to hear it,” he whispered.

  “Then you’ll have to come back to me.”

  Cole ran back to the facility. He didn’t stop running. Inside the building, down the hall, around the corner, down the stairs. The place was deserted. It wasn’t right. Nobody had been on the first floor, and nobody was in the basement. Nobody except Michael, standing in the middle of the room like he hadn’t moved since Cole had left with Eva and Brady. Frozen in place. Rifle at his side. Cole walked slowly, from the stairs to the doorway.

  He stopped there.

  “Mike?” he said tentatively. “What’re you doing?”

  “You shouldn’t have come back, Cole.”

  “I wasn’t going to leave you here. You had to know that.”

  “After everything I did? Yeah, I thought you’d leave me. I wanted you to leave me. I deserve to—”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I didn’t think you’d come back,” Michael said, sounding more and more like he was in trance, “but they did.”

  Michael was looking past Cole now, down the hallway. Cole turned, but not in time. Reynold was charging at him. Cole barely had time to brace himself. He flew across the room and crashed into the wall. He scrambled to his feet, but Reynold was already on him. Raining punches down on Cole. Cole covered his head with his arms and waited for a moment when he could strike back.

  “You!” Reynold kept shrieking. “You! You!”

  Cole couldn’t wait any longer. He’d get beaten to death if he didn’t act. He crouched low and then exploded with a right uppercut. It connected with Reynold’s head, and the monster fell backwards. Cole pounced. He straddled Reynold’s waist and punched Reynold with both fists over and over again.

  A shot rang out, and blue blood erupted from Reynold’s chest. It just made the creature angrier. Reynold stood up with Cole in his arms and rammed him into the wall. They punched each other at the same time, and Cole slid across the floor, through the doorway. Michael backed away from Reynold and shot him again, this time in the stomach.

  Reynold let out a horrifying shriek.

  Cole stood up to go back into the room, but Michael stepped in his way.

  “What are you doing?” Cole asked.

  “You’ve done enough,” Michael said. “It’s my turn, now.”

  “You can’t beat him.”

  Reynold was getting to his feet. His head just below the ceiling. His skeleton pushing through his pale skin. Blood dripping from his wounds and out of his mouth.

  He shrieked again.

  “Yes, I can.” Michael drew his handgun. He aimed it at the keypad Cole had used to open the doors the night Michael had shot him. The code word flashed in his mind. He heard his dad’s voice. Sorry, kiddo. Michael shot the keypad, and the doors slammed shot, blocking Cole from the room.

  “No! Michael!” Cole shouted, banging on the glass.

  Michael detached two grenades from his belt. “You have go now, Cole.”

  “Open the doors, Michael! Now!”

  Michael pulled the pins from the grenades. “I can’t.”

  “Please!”

  “Get out of here.”

  Cole stopped banging. Stopped shouting. He put his hand on the door. Reynold lunged at Michael.

  Michael dropped the grenades.

  Cole gave Michael one last look, then ran to the door, up the stairs, around the corner, down the hall. He heard the grenades go off and ran faster. The explosion caught up with him at the back door; the force of it threw him into the air. He landed hard against the ground and rolled to a stop just before the electric fence.

  Cole turned over onto his back and watched the building go up in flames. The fire reached up over the trees, into the sky to touch the northern lights. The spirits danced to the beat of the drum, dancing around the flames as though they were a sacred fire. He could hear Elder Mariah’s voice, telling him the story of how this place had got its name.

  A long time ago, an Elder named this place. He looked up at the sky one night and thought the northern lights looked like ribbons of scars. The Elder thought, before we were here, something must have happened. The sky had been cut and out of that wound came the heavens. The wound healed, but that past was still there, in the scars that were left behind. It helped shape the beauty that we see now.

  The day Cole arrived in Wounded Sky, it seemed as though that wound had opened. Tonight, it looked like those ribbons of scars were bleeding red, all the way down to Mother Earth, but for the first time since coming home, Cole felt like those wounds could heal again. And he knew that it had never been just his deal. It had never been just his mission.

  It had been Eva’s. Brady’s. Michael’s. Dr. Captain’s. Elder Mariah’s. All of theirs.

  29

  BEGINNING

  COLE STOOD IN THE ORANGE GLOW OF THE FIRE, feeling the heat from the burning facility. He stared at the sky where the flames mingled with the northern lights. He shifted his gaze to the building, the back door. Watching, waiting, for Reynold to come charging through the fire.

  That’s how these stories go, isn’t it? Cole thought. Something Choch would say. But in reality, something that might happen. Charging out the back door, or maybe, out the front door. That’s where Cole had encountered Upayokwitigo the first time, why not the last time? And what if he missed the creature, and it got away?

  Wounded Sky would continue to be haunted by its presence.

  Cole got to his feet. His body ached. He was probably covered in bruises; bruises that would be gone by morning, but hurt like hell now. But just like when Elder Mariah had applied the paste to Cole’s zombie-like body, this was a good pain. He was alive. So were Eva and Brady.

  “Michael.”

  Michael was why they were alive. Everything he’d thought he knew wasn’t true. Michael was a hero. Cole’s dad hadn’t cheated on his mom. He’d tried to save Vikki from Reynold. His dad was a hero as well. It seemed that everybody was a hero but Cole. And he was okay with that. It was like Choch had said. He was Cole Harper. It may not be what the story should’ve been, but it’s what the story was.

  Cole staggered along the perimeter of the burning research facility. He used the fence for support; the fire had kicked out the electricity. The old picnic bench, the one he’d sat on with his mom and dad, was intact. Old, dried wood somehow not burned by the flames raging just feet away. Cole let go of the fence and stumbled to the bench, but fell onto his stomach. He tried to push himself up, but collapsed again.

  He felt hands around his shoulders, and he was lifted to his feet. Eva was on one side of him, Brady on the other. Eva wrapped his arm around her shoulders. They helped him over to the bench and sat him down.

  “What happened?” Eva asked.

  Cole just shook his head and watched the front door.

  Nothing came out.

  “Michael?” Brady said.

  “No,” Cole said in a whisper. “He, uhhh…he sacrificed himself for me.” A crowd was gathering. Cole could he
ar rustling, murmuring, people running up to the fence. He didn’t turn around. He didn’t want anybody to know he was alive yet. “He sacrificed himself for everybody.”

  “Let’s get you out of here,” Eva said.

  Cole ran his hands across the surface of the bench. He imagined his dad, and his mom, sitting there with him. He stared at the ground, where he’d thrown an apple seed long ago. Where, he’d thought, a tree might grow, and keep his dad away from work and home with him. Sorry, kiddo.

  “Yeah,” Cole said, “let’s go.”

  Brady and Eva helped him to his feet. They ignored calls from the crowd about what had happened and about who was with them.

  Behind the building, away from the crowd, they stood together, Cole’s arms draped across his friends’ shoulders. They stood there long enough that the fire began to die down and all the warm colours bled into the sky, dancing with the ribbons overhead.

  “I need to go in,” Cole said. “I need to make sure it’s really over.”

  “We’ll go with you,” Brady said.

  “Yeah,” Eva said. “You’re not allowed to go off on your own, like ever again. Got it?”

  “I’m okay with—”

  “Wait!”

  Cole felt Brady pull back, just as they started moving.

  “What is it, B?”

  “Look.” Brady pointed to the doors, where a large flame was moving within the building.

  “What the—”

  They froze. Cole’s heart raced. Reynold. He’d survived. Once outside, he’d come after them again. Cole pushed Eva and Brady to the side and tried to keep his feet firm on the ground.

  Finish this.

  The flames moved closer, out of the building towards them.

  Cole clenched his fists and summoned whatever strength he had left.

  “Come on,” he said.

  As the flames approached, floating through the air, they unfolded gracefully to reveal two figures: Jayne and Michael. The flames receded, until they disappeared into Jayne.

  “Michael,” Cole said. “You…”

  “You said he was…” Eva started.

  “He was…” Cole shook his head and looked Michael over, from head to toe. His face was covered in soot, his clothes were burned, he had cuts on his arms, but he was alive. “How’s this possible?”