Outcasts (12 page)

“You got it!”

The enemy surged. We met them at the crest of the staircase. The Outlaw dealt death with each hack, and I fired my assault rifle as fast as machinery allowed. Their gunmen returned fire and I absorbed hits in my vest and thigh, but we slowed the tide.

Pilot WhatsHisName threw the helicopter back into the sky, diving straight towards stars.

They were safe.

The Pave Hawk ducked, suffering a salvo of enemy gunfire from lower levels. Then, its heavy miniguns roared and unleashed .308 death into the top floors. So loud! Glass exploded. The structure shuddered.

“Outlaw, time to go!” We turned in unison, sprinted to the side of the helipad, chased by a sea of insanity. I angled towards the Pave Hawk and
Leapt
.

Not even close. I couldn’t jump like Chase. And if I had gotten close, I’d have hit rotors most likely. Stupid! Stupid Samantha! So high up. The free fall would last…sixty seconds? I couldn’t do math with wind howling in my ears. Then Chase slammed into me. He took my hands and carefully placed them at at my waist. Of
course
! The flight suit. I’d forgotten, too hopped up on adrenaline, so ready for death. Almost welcomed it. But not today. I hooked gloves into pants, extended the wings and took flight.

Samantha and I flew miles across Los Angeles. We landed around midnight when we saw the lights of an iHop on 6th Street. Both of us famished, I helped Samantha stow her parachute. She announced she was going to kiss Lee on the mouth as a Thank You for the wings and chute. If I knew Lee, he was going to suggest Second Base might be a more appropriate sign of gratitude.

Samantha extracted a bullet from her outer thigh, the way a normal human would remove an air rifle pellet, and secured the wound with a bandage. To avoid recognition, I wrapped the sash around my head in a more common fashion, like a balaclava, and we collapsed into a booth. Everything hurt. The bones in my hands ached. My face felt raw, like someone had scorched the skin with electricity. Which they had. My ribs burned from slash wounds. Claws had raked my neck. My ears rang from Samantha’s gunshots. Every time I blinked the darkness filled with muzzle bursts.

Patrons inside the warm diner cast curious glances our way but we weren’t dressed dissimilarly from extreme hipsters. Except for the blood. Each of us was splattered with an alarming amount of drying blood. But other than that, we fit in. And our vests. Those were weird too. And my Stick of Treachery. That was also odd.

“Omelets,” we told our server. “Five each. Whatever’s quickest.” She cocked an unamused and heavily penciled eyebrow and sauntered off.

I had texts from Puck.

>> PuckDaddy is tracking u

>> stop flying around

>> where r u 2 going

>> r u at an ihop ??

>> anderson is freaking out

>> ur at a ihop i can tell

>> ur so weird

>> fine. eat and ignore Puck

>> not like PuckDaddy has been worried sick

>> i gave isaac ur location

>> don’t think he cares right now

>> hes got natalie

>> bet hes making out

I texted Katie.
We are alive. But we didn’t get him.

>> Aw, I’m sorry, handsome. You’ll get him next time. I’m sure you tried really hard.

I grinned.
I love you.

>> Back at’cha! Come find me. I don’t know where I am but I have all the kisses for you. =)

Samantha asked, “Do you have your wallet?”

“No. Left it with Katie. Why?”

“iHop is going to frown on our lack of funds. Tell Isaac to bring us money.”

“No way. He just got Natalie back. Let’s give them some privacy.”

She rolled her eyes. “I am
not
washing dishes to pay for this food.”

“I’ll text Dad.”

She perked up. “Even better idea. I could use Richard right now.”

“Oh,” I grimaced and my stomach lurched. “Holy…never mind, ew. Gross. I’ll just go rob someone.”

I ate four omelets, two plates of hash browns, two bowls of fruit, three chocolate pancakes, and drank six glasses of ice water and three mugs of coffee. Samantha ate an extra pancake, just to prove she could consume more. No talking. Just shoveling food. My hands quit shaking after twenty minutes.

“My father doesn’t want any part of
that
.” I pointed at Samantha as she leaned back, holding her stomach with one hand and loosening her belt with the other.

“I don’t care,” she sighed. “Don’t need him anymore. I’m good.”

Puck texted me.
>> puck is sending help ur way, u dummies.

I replied,
Send money too. We’re broke.

We sat in silence, digesting at an inhuman rate. I sucked on a mint from the counter and closed my eyes, trying to remember how many hostages boarded the helicopter. Not enough.

“So how’d you do all that?” Samantha asked, interrupting my recollections.

“Do all what?”

“Chase.” She glared with a piercing, knowing glint in her eye. “You have telekinesis. Or something.”

“I have
what
??”

“You controlled the Chosen with your mind.”

“Oh. That. No, I just yelled at them and they believed me.” I screwed up my eyes and replayed the night’s events in my mind. How
had
that happened? I remembered watching the enemy…knowing they’d do as I ordered…understanding the disease in me dominated the disease in them…some preternatural instinct told me so. “It was like, in that moment of time, I was connected to them. Like wolves in a pack. We shared a collective mind. And I was the Alpha. Does that make sense?”

“No. Maybe. But what about the regular guys? His normal thugs? Why did they obey you?”

“I don’t know, Samantha.” I rubbed my forehead and pinched the bridge of my nose. “I’m too tired. Don’t over think it. They might have just been scared.”

“Did you kill Walter?”

“No,” I sighed, irritated at the memory. Walter was lethal. Quick as a viper. He’d gotten stronger too; I felt it. “I think I broke his shoulder. One of the Chemist’s new electro-toys zapped me and he got away.”

“Wimp,” she grinned.

“You shut up. Those guys hurt. Fried my earpiece.”

“Did they get you with a baton? Or the electric gloves?”

“Never saw the gloves. Just guys holding electrified bats. Actually, it was a girl that shocked me.”

She nodded. “The gloves are nasty. They touch you, or you touch them, pow. Like a bomb goes off on contact.”

“What happens if the glove is armed and they accidentally touch a flagpole or something?”

“Or your Boom Stick?”

“I need thicker gloves.” I pulled mine from my pocket. The fabric was torn in multiple places. Lee would receive my commission soon for a new pair. “I didn’t sense the Chemist. Or smell him, or whatever it is that alerts us he’s nearby.”

“I thought Walter was in Seattle. Guess he came in for that damn Teresa Triplett news bulletin.”

“Who knows.” I shook my head. “They just fly around, destroying the planet at their leisure. And we keep missing them.”

She yawned so wide her jaw cracked. “This has been a long forty-eight hours. I don’t know how Puck goes days without sleeping.”

To our surprise, Dad walked into iHop fifteen minutes later just as our fellow patrons began noticing Samantha’s resemblance to the girl on the television screens. The girl worth millions. Dad gave us both hugs and paid our bill.

Samantha climbed into the front of his squad car. I fell into the back, next to Katie. She still wore camouflage, and I rested my head in her lap. Dad put the car in gear and we motored out of the parking lot. Katie carefully removed the sash from my head, unzipped my vest, and examined my various injuries.

She pointed to a cut over my eye. “How’d you get this one?”

“Walter hit me.”

“I dislike Walter.”

“Me too.”

She sucked at her teeth, a cute look for her, and stared out the window in thought. “He’s the one who shot your helicopter down in Compton. With a rocket. And attacked you with a knife while I watched from the bus. Right?”

“Correct.”

“What about this one?” She gingerly touched an open gash on my shoulder.

“Flying through windows.”

“I think it needs stitches.”

“It should heal in the next day or two,” I yawned. “Might leave a scar.”

“Scars are sexy. What about this bruise?”

“Gun shot. I think.”

“Knives and glass penetrate your skin easier than bullets?”

“Dunno,” I murmured from the cusp of consciousness. The quietly rocking car lulled me towards sleep.

“What about this welt near your ear? It’s red and puffy. Some of the skin is peeling.”

“Electrical burn.”

“I forbid you from going into that tower again. Everyone there was mean to you.”

“Yes ma’am.”

I woke up a few hours later in an unknown bed. Katie was lying next to me, scratching my back with one hand and texting with the other. Other than the glow from her phone, it was dark. Other than the hum from an AC unit, it was quiet.

I whispered, “Wanna make out?”

“No,” she replied. “You stink.”

“Okay. Good night again.”

After hours of effort, I forced my eyelids open. The nightstand clock read 9:12. Hopefully morning. No windows. The room was small and white and undecorated. Military, most likely. No Katie.

My dad sat on a metal chair in the corner, reading something on an iPad. Small brown reading glasses perched on his nose, comically small on such a big hairy guy. Samantha said he looks like the guy who used to host
Dirty Jobs
.

“When’d you get glasses?” I grunted.

He answered, “Recently,” but didn’t look up. “Quite a snore you got, boy.”

I snorted some air through my nostrils. One side was mostly clogged. “I think something got knocked loose back there.” Talking made my head ring, but I felt…okay. The welt near my ear wasn’t as swollen as last night. My body ached instead of screamed. Rapidly regenerating body tissue and a high white blood cell count rules. “Sorry about our house.”

“S’okay. All the furniture was ugly.”

“Mom picked the furniture.”

“Beautiful woman,” he sniffed at the memory, a smile on his face. “Bad decorator.”

“Did we have insurance?”

“Yes. Insurance company should have enough cash for all the Los Angeles payouts sometime next century. Your cousin called. He wants you to visit his fourth grade class. In costume.”

“My costume is destroyed. Look. I’m surprised the parachute deployed. And my mask is gone.”

I held up the mangled vest. It was burnt and ripped, never to be worn again. Dad turned his face away and closed his eyes. “Son. Fathers don’t need to see visual evidence of their sons’ brush with death.”

“Sorry. Tell him I’ll visit his class if I get new gear. And call it gear, not a costume. Makes me sound cooler.”

Dad turned off the iPad, slid glasses into his shirt pocket, cleared his throat, and said, “Has it occurred to you that if the Chemist had been there last night then you’d be dead?”

I tried to get out of bed and failed. “What do you mean?”

“From what you told’ve me, the Chemist is a much more dangerous monster than Walter. And if you almost died facing Walter…”

I took a deep breath and let it out in a blast at the ceiling. “Yeah.”

“Son, perhaps….if you are the world’s most valuable resource against this enemy,
perhaps
you should exercise more prudence about when to throw your life away.”

“Prudence?”

“You heard me.”

“I don’t consider it ‘throwing my life away.’ Last night was a calculated risk.”

He made a dissatisfied noise. “Did you have a plan? Last night during the calculated risk?”

“Yes. Hit the Chemist in the head really hard.”

“But he wasn’t there. And if he had been, can you even do that?”

“…I’m not sure,” I admitted. And it was the truth. I didn’t know if I could. I
hoped
I could. But the evidence sided against me. He had been alive too long; his body was too strong, too fast, and his brain too quick.

Sanguine. That was the word. I was being sanguine about my dismal chances. Katie would be proud of my vocabulary.

“There is no father on earth more proud of his son than I am. But I am compelled to point out things that your…adoring public…won’t. You jumped into an enemy-occupied tower seeking a target that wasn’t there and nearly died. That wasn’t a calculated risk. That was an inch from a disaster. Samantha told me how close she and the others came to dying. Following you.”

“Yeah. That was scary.”

He nodded, his beefy arms crossed over his chest. “You’re doing all this for Katie, aren’t you.”

“Probably. He threatened her and then put a bounty on her head.”

“Are you sure dying during a rushed and miscalculated risk is the best way to protect her?”

I had no answer. There was no correct response. So I stayed silent and prickled painfully with the rebuke.

He said, “Your disease forces you to act unwisely.”

“I deal with fight-or-flight episodes often. Samantha does too. The adrenaline makes us jumpy. Craves action.”

His voice was thick with emotion and intensity. He leaned forward and rested forearms on his knees. “I honor your bravery. And I know you shoulder more responsibility and consequences than I can imagine. Far too much responsibility. It would crush a lesser person. But it seems to me that if you’re going to survive this, you’ll need to control the impulses.” He found my foot beneath the covers and shook it. “You’re doing a great job, kid. And your next step into manhood needs to be self-control. In your situation, you can’t afford many missteps.”

“You’re right, Dad. I know you are. But I’m so desperate to get rid of the Chemist…you know?”

“We all are. But I want you around for the decades it’ll take to clean up his mess.” He stood and put his hand on the door knob. “This is a marathon. Not a sprint.”

“Understood.”

“You should shower, too.”