Discovery (Science of Psionics Book #1) (19 page)

Hearing no reply to my protestations, I
slumped against the bars of our small town jail. They had simply
shaken their heads at our tale of the siege and proceeded to lock
us up with the drunks and crazies that were rounded up last night.
The deputy who arrested us thought that we were homeless drifters
making our way from town to town, robbing places like the donut
shop as we went.

All we could do was wait for the sheriff
himself to come on duty and hope that he would be willing to listen
to reason. Carl had slumped down on a cot in the cell and was
apparently asleep, but I was too frantic with worry to even think
about trying to rest. A madman was loose in the hills and Linda
needed my help.

I had to admit to myself that the officer did
have a point. With our scruffy appearance, it was easy to picture
us as people who slept under a bridge on a regular basis. I had no
wallet, and Carl was carrying a loaded gun in his pants. Since I
couldn’t tell him the real reason why Sid would want to shoot at
us, my story sounded a little weak even to my own ears.

At noon, the sheriff finally showed up.
Treating me like a dangerous felon, he handcuffed me before leading
me to a small interrogation room. “Ok, son – I’ve just had an
earful from my deputy about your fairy tale, so how’s about telling
me things first hand and we’ll see where we go from there.”

I related our whole experience over the last
few days, heavily editing out the parts concerning our abilities.
He watched me steadily the whole time, and I couldn’t tell what he
was thinking. He did start when I mentioned that Carl had been
shot, and he halted me in my recitation in order to page his
deputy. He asked him to check that part of the story out, and then
told me to continue.

I skipped the part where Sara shot back at
the snipers, but emphasized the fact that he blew up my truck. I
chalked the mortar shell misses up to bad luck and bad aim on their
part. Our flight into the hills became a run into the trees where
we simply hid in a cave. It was times like this that made me glad I
was a writer; I could come up with all kinds of bullshit on the
fly. Finishing with our ‘run’ into town through the forest, I ended
with what we were doing at the donut shop when the deputy arrested
us.

He stared at me for a full minute before
saying, “That was the most entertaining pile of horse droppings
I’ve heard all week. You should be a writer.”

The irony of that made me groan, but it also
gave me an idea on how to prove my identity. “I am a writer. My
picture is on both my website and on Facebook. Check it out and you
should be able to identify me.”

“I’ll take a look, but I won’t promise
anything. Until I figure out what to do with you, you’ll just have
to wait.”

I didn’t like it, but I could understand his
point of view. As he brought me back to the cell, I resigned myself
to waiting. He took Carl away for questioning next. Although we had
briefly discussed our story, we hadn’t gotten into too many of the
fine details. I hoped that he kept things fairly generic so our
stories would match.

At least he had his wallet with picture ID.
That and the record of him going through customs at the airport
recently should prove that he’s not some random drifter. I wasn’t
sure what they would make of his bullet wound; that could go either
way. It might lend credence to his explanation, but could also make
him look like a thug.

I paced back and forth in the cell for about
an hour before they finally brought Carl back. Once the deputy had
left us alone I whispered to him, “Well, what did he say?”

“He thinks I’m a nutter, but he admitted that
our stories matched up enough for him to look into things.”

“He’s not going up to the house alone, is
he?”

“I think he’s going to check the various
police databases on us first and then maybe more questions.”

“Great. We don’t have time for this crap –
Linda needs our help.”

“Patience, grasshopper,” he quipped. “He may
be a small hick town sheriff, but he’s no dummy. All will be
well.”

“Just what I needed … The Canadian Confucius
comforts me with calming corny comments.”

It looked like he had to run that through his
head a few times to make sure he understood it right, but then he
smiled.

“I’m at your service, eh!”

Linda: Payback’s a Bitch

Sara held up a hand, signaling for me to halt
our flight. By my reckoning, we were about two dozen yards away
from the first pair of watchers. Once we realized that the scouts
had no direct line of sight on our cave entrance, leaving became
easy. We simply flew out and carefully hugged the rock face until
we could get behind them.

Our biggest advantages were silence and
mobility; there was no way we could have snuck up behind these two
if we were on foot. We used that advantage to get close, and now it
was time for me to get down business. I slowly created a force
field in the shape of a column around each of them, being careful
not to alarm them early. When everything was firmly in my mind, I
snapped them both shut and shrunk them down until they were wrapped
tight around the bodies of the men.

Without pause, I began closing down the ends
of the cylinders, making them air tight. I gave Sara the thumbs up
and lowered her to the ground, where she immediately began moving
in on them. I kept the shield up until they stopped moving, then
popped open the top to allow them air again. This was one of Sara’s
ideas for offensive, but non-lethal combat. I brought myself to the
ground a few yards away, just to be safe.

Sara gave them a quick look over and found
them both alive but unconscious, so I dropped the cylinder. She
made short work of stripping them of their gear and tying them up.
Not only did she relieve them of anything that could remotely be
used as a weapon, she also took the shirt and jacket from one of
them to replace the rags she was wearing.

Once they were secured, she flashed me a
humongous grin. “I told ya it would work.”

“I was nervous, but I never doubted you.”

“Maybe not, but I’m pretty sure I detected a
bit of self-doubt in you. Anyway, it worked perfectly and they’re
both alive, but out of the picture with no alarm raised. Now let’s
not pat ourselves on the back for too long, or Sid will figure it
out when these bozos fail to report in on schedule. Now that we’ve
started, we can’t stop until it’s over and done with.”

Nodding agreement, I brought us into the air
again and began the journey home. Sara wanted me to keep a mental
eye out for troops on the way back in case they were moving up, so
the flight was fairly slow. I didn’t mind, as it allowed me to
briefly rest along the way. In my weakened condition, flying was
taxing my strength and I wanted to be at my best when we
arrived.

Despite her caution, or maybe because of it,
we arrived at the next pair of troops without detection. The
cylinder trick seemed to have worked pretty good last time, so I
repeated my efforts on this pair. Once they were encased, I brought
them to us this time so Sara wouldn’t have to get too close to the
edge of the trees.

Once they were out, she stripped the gear
again and added it to the growing arsenal in her backpack. “Back
into the trees,” she whispered as she finished tying the last
knot.

I hurried us along as best I could. While
Sara was dealing with the guards, I had scanned the area around my
house and found no surprises. Positioning ourselves as close to the
third pair as I dared, I repeated the cylinder attack again. This
time, as I began bringing the pair toward us, I heard a shout of
alarm from across the road. The other guards had seen their
companions floating off into the woods!

I dropped the guards encased in my cylinder
to the ground like a hot potato and lowered the two of us almost as
quickly. As soon as Sara had her feet on the ground she was off and
running, a gun in each hand. I wasn’t sure what to do yet, so I
simply hid behind a tree and started building up a shield for when
they started to shoot at us.

Feeling a tiny bit safer, I closed my eyes
and switched to mental sight to figure out what was going on. I
quickly located Sara who had taken cover behind a fallen log and
was swapping out her handguns for her precious rifle. The two
remaining guards were slowly making their way toward us but keeping
low and out of sight.

They reached the ditch on the far side of the
road and split off from each other. To make matters worse, Sara
seemed to not have noticed the split, as her attention was focused
on where the pair would have come out from if they stayed to their
original path.

I couldn’t wait any longer or someone was
going to get hurt. Reaching out, I plucked the machine gun from the
hands of the first one and flung it into the trees. The second guy
must have either been more alert or simply better prepared, as he
fought the pull on his weapon and began spraying bullets in our
direction.

Through either luck or skill, some of those
bullets came frighteningly close. Some of them hit my shield
causing me to cry out in pain, but I refused to let the darkness
take me. With a final twisting wrench, I tore it from his grasp and
sent it skittering across the gravel of the road. With a silent
‘thank you’ to Darth Vader for the idea, I formed a circle of force
around each of their necks and began choking the consciousness out
of them.

It was over in moments, but there were still
people inside my house, and now they were aware that something was
going on out here. I put the same type of force band around the
arms and legs of the four road guards and headed over to rejoin
Sara. If our advantage of stealth and surprise was gone, perhaps it
was time for a bold and unexpected move.

“I’m going for the house. Cover me,” I
said.

Sara didn’t bother with words or even a nod;
she simply started toward the house in order to take up a position
where she would be able to back me up. Saying a silent prayer, I
moved deeper into the woods away from the house before gathering my
courage for my next move.

There was a pair of exceptionally tall trees
here, and using them for cover, I shot straight up into the air. I
quickly pulled about two hundred feet of altitude and then arced my
flight over to come down at the middle of my roof. I hoped that my
maneuver was unseen from the house, and since I hadn’t been shot
at, I took that as a good sign. I stopped myself a foot off of the
roof so they wouldn’t hear any noise and turned my senses
downward.

There was one person at each doorway, but to
my sight they all looked the same. It would have been nice to
determine which one was Sid so I could take care of him first, but
I suppose it didn’t matter. I would get them all out.

I took care of the one by the patio door
first. I simply flung him through the glass door and into the yard
where I proceeded to bash his head against the wood pile until he
stopped moving. I gave him a couple more raps for good measure and
turned my attention toward the next guy. My strength was draining
fast with all of the mental activity but all I could do was take a
few deep breaths before continuing.

The next one I chose was the one who was
watching from the garage. I took him out of the side door like I
did with the last guy, but I didn’t have a convenient wood pile to
bash him against this time. I simply flew him up and then brought
him down in a loop which slammed him into the ground. He managed to
shout out “roof” before impact. He bounced, but he didn’t move
after that. Now only Sid was left.

I started to turn my attention downward
again, but heard a clatter form the front of the house. Sid was
running away! Smiling in triumph, I quickly tore his gun out of his
hands, but before I could do any more I was rocked by an explosion.
A grenade, I thought absently as I fell to the roof and began
rolling toward the edge.

I landed hard on the front porch, stunned and
unable to move. Sid turned to look back and started to guffaw at me
lying helpless on the porch. I thought he might come back to finish
me off, but he apparently figured that running and living was a
higher priority. He spun back to run into the forest and instead,
ran straight into the club that Sara was swinging at his head.

Sara raised her club to bring it down on him
but paused, dropped it, and slowly pulled out her wicked looking
bowie knife. Sid climbed unsteadily back onto his feet and pulled
out a hunting knife of his own. I couldn’t think – couldn’t act –
all I could do was watch them helplessly.

They began circling each other slowly. Sid’s
face was covered in blood from the blow that took him down. Vitriol
poured from his mouth as he cursed his wife in between attacks.
Sara was the exact opposite; she made not a single sound, not even
the grunts that you might expect to accompany the slashes and
thrusts they were exchanging.

A sudden charge from Sid forced Sara
backward, where she tripped over her abandoned club and fell to the
ground. Her knife flew from her hand as she landed. Sid quickly
leapt on top of her and brought his knife down in a vicious arc
toward her head. She managed to block the attack, but now Sid was
pressing downward, forcing the knife closer and closer toward her
throat.

It didn’t look good for my friend. She should
have just shot him as he was running rather than letting her
emotions take over. She wanted her revenge to be up close and
personal and now it would cost her. As they continued to struggle,
I saw that Sara’s face was covered in blood now too, but I couldn’t
tell if she was injured or if it was due to Sid’s wounds dripping
down on her.

I thought it was over. One more good push
from Sid and the knife would strike home. I imagined that I would
be next. With the first sound that she uttered since the fight
began, Sara erupted in a shout of rage and flung Sid off of her …
about twenty feet off her!