The Seven (15 page)

"We can't, Holly," said John. "Sometimes, in battle, no matter how much it hurts, you have to leave your soldiers. The unit is more important than the individual."

"She's being assaulted!"

"Sarah's tough. She can handle it. I'm sure she's just waiting for the right moment to break free."

"Sexually assaulted! Some perv is touching her!"

John's face changed. His cheeks became hollows as he clenched his teeth. "Rape?"

"No, but she's not happy. We've got to go back."

John checked the side mirror and saw the headlights bouncing behind the truck. Holly watched his eyes dart to the roadsides. She could see him thinking, debating. She could see him putting ideas together. It was a good thing he was trained to be a super soldier, because the only thoughts in Holly's mind was getting the barn owl to swoop into the back of the truck, talons bared, and claw the pig's eyes out of his skull.

John called into the back of the truck. "Doc? How soon until Andy's on his feet?"

"He's starting to come around now. I can give him enough serum to get him mobile," Sebbins called back.

"Do it!" John said. "How close are our pursuers? Can your bat see if they've got weapons?"

Holly quickly tapped into the bat's psyche and it sent her mental pictures of a pair of Humvees, on fast assault. Twin, turret-mounted fifty-caliber machine guns were on the back, a soldier manning each one. The bat's eyesight was very good. "Step on the gas, they're almost on us. If we stop, they'll catch up fast. There are only two trucks, though. I think the squirrels incapacitated the rest of the vehicles."

"Gotta love those squirrels. Doc! We need Andy up on his overly-large feet!"

"I'm almost there, Spaghetti-head," Andy thundered.

"Andy, there's trees alongside the road. Think you can you pull one of them down?"

"I think so. We'll find out pretty quick, eh?"

"If you can't, we're going to be screwed."

"Then I guess I better not mess up."

"Batter up, big boy. Swing for the fences." John stepped heavy on the brake and the truck slid sideways in the road.

Andy rolled out of the back of the truck and landed on his feet. Holly watched as he wrapped his bulky arms around the trunk of a medium-sized Maple and began to strain. The tree began to waiver. Andy braced his legs and strained again. There was a violent ripping sound and the tree was suddenly out of the ground. Andy let it fall and it crashed into the ground along the side of the road. He wiped his forehead. His shoulders sagged. "No sweat. John! Drive away. I'm going to need the room."

"I'll help him!" Holly threw open her door and jumped to the ground.

John pulled the truck forward spraying rocks; the tires caught the truck sped away leaving Andy behind. The Humvees approached quickly. The soldiers fired a couple of bursts after the APC. Andy grabbed the tree at the roots, took a step, swiveled his hips and swung the tree like a baseball bat, throwing it at the truck. The tree made a single rotation in the air and crushed into the first Humvee. The driver was launched through the windshield. The soldier in the turret was thrown into the ditch on the side of the road. The second hummer swerved and skidded away from the wreckage. The driver took it into the ditch, drove around the tree, and headed back to the road.

"Get out of here, Holly. I have a feeling this is going to get ugly."

"What are you going to do?"

"Whatever it takes. Get going." Andy tucked his fists into balls, lowered his head, and began to run at the Humvee. Andy lowered his shoulder and braced for the impact. The Humvee rammed him, the driver unable to swerve.

Holly squeezed her eyes shut but it didn't help. The noise was horrible, even worse than when the tree hit the first Humvee. Holly's sensitive ears picked up each and every noise involved: The slap and splash of human flesh against metal, the grunts of the driver and the soldier in the turret, the rending and twisting of the chassis and the body of the Humvee, and Andy's low, rumbling growl. Every noise seemed to echo and re-echo in Holly's head. It was more noise than she ever wanted to hear, even worse than gunfire. When it was over, she heard one heartbeat. Not three.

She hesitated, and then dared a look. One of the soldiers was laying ten feet in front of her. He was definitely dead. His head was an odd shape, probably fractured his skull on impact with the ground. He had been wearing a black beret, not that a helmet would have helped a lot. Andy was in the middle of the road, only a foot or two from where he had rammed the truck. He lay still, his surgical gown clothing ripped and torn, but Holly could hear the slow, steady thudding of his heart.

"Andy? Andy, please tell me you're okay."

Andy blinked his eyes. He let out a low, wavering groan. "Oh, that was not smart."

"Are you okay? Is anything broken?"

"I don't think so."

"Don't move. Stay still. I'll get help."

"Forget it," said Andy. He rolled to his side, pushing himself to his feet. He arched his back and joints popped. "John will start heading back toward us. Go meet him and get out of here."

"What about you?"

"I'm not going anywhere without Sarah. I will get her out of here even if I have to take on the whole U.S. Army."

"It's a suicide mission," Holly said. "Come back with the rest of us. We come back as a unified team. Once Posey and Kenny are healthy, we'll come right back. We'll use our powers and shove their plans right down their throats! Without you, we're not full strength. Literally."

"Without Sarah we're not full strength. You all are welcome to join me, but I'm not going anywhere without her."

"You're not well! You need to heal."

"Healed enough. Sarah is in danger."

"Andy," Holly tried to reason with him. "You're going to get caught. You may be strong, but they've got a lot of soldiers and weapons!"

"My choice. If I get caught, at least she won't be alone."

Holly tried one last tack, "You're not even wearing clothes!" Andy looked down at the torn and bloody surgical gown around his waist. He scratched his wide, hairy belly and shrugged.

"I won't care if they don't." He gave Holly a mischievous smile and started lumbering back toward the Home, the ratty, dressing gown loincloth flapping around his thighs. He swayed like a loping elephant, each of his thick legs landing heavily in the ground. Maybe it was real, maybe it was just Holly's imagination, but it felt like the ground trembled each time his feet landed. Andy quickly disappeared over a small rise. Beyond the hill lay the way back to the Home. In the sky, smoke was rising thickly from the fire and the flames were coloring the gray, early morning sky a hazy, burnt orange.

Holly felt anchored to her spot. She felt helpless and sick. The brown bat projected a mental image into her brain. The APC was returning. Then, something happened she didn't expect: Her mental link with the bat suddenly filled with emotions of concern and wonder. She looked up and saw the bat darting above her head. It was fluttering and looking down at her. Through its eyes, she could see herself. She could see the look on her face, melancholy changing to confused. The bat flooded her with feelings of concern again. Holly quickly realized that the bat was no longer under her direct control. Her mental command link with the bat had been severed when she was thinking about Andy and Sarah, but somehow the bat had reestablished the link with her. It was projecting its own emotions into her. The bat could read her emotional output. It was worried about her!

The APC rolled to a halt and Holly got back into the cab. "Andy's gone after Sarah."

John seethed for a second, and then punched the dashboard and dented the metal covering.

Dr. Sebbins stuck her head through the window between the cab and the bed. "We've got to get to the safe house. I've only got enough sedative to keep Posey under for about three, maybe four hours. After that, she's going to emerge into a world of pain that I do not think her body will be able to survive. If she doesn't get into the hyper-womb, she
will
die."

"We don't have a choice, do we?" John asked Holly.

She shook her head. "Andy and Sarah can fend for themselves."

"They're going to have to," said John. "How far to the safe house, Doc?"

"About a hundred miles, maybe a few more. We're going to have to get a map at some point, otherwise we'll be lost."

John looked at the road toward the Home. Holly could see him trying to piece together some sort of plan. She could also see the frustration in his eyes that told her he wasn't coming up with anything.

"They'll be okay," Holly said again. John nodded slowly and put the truck back into gear. He did a U-turn and rolled away from the Home, away from Sarah and Andy.

Indigo stuck her head into the cab. "We've got Posey. We escaped the Home. None of us are ever going back into that building. None of us are dead. It's a victory, right?"

"Yeah," John said. "A victory. For now."

Holly didn't say anything. She tried to think of what sort of image to project to the bat that was still following the truck; she wanted to reassure it, to tell it that everything was going to be okay. Her time spent in the minds of animals had already taught her one thing about the "lesser creatures," however: Animals relied on raw emotion and instinct, lies were constructs of humans. The bat kept projecting ideas of assistance and help, but Holly could only send it unsure images of an unsure future.

The sun broke on the horizon and the sky was becoming filled with rosy pink and bright orange. In the side mirror, Holly could see a thin column of smoke rising into the dawning blue.

"Red sky in morning..." John muttered.

Holly wrapped her fleece jacket tightly around her and tried to get a grip on the worry she felt in her stomach. She finished the statement in a whisper. "Sailors take warning."

-- End of Book I --

Book Two

Truths and Consequence

S
arah sat on the floor of a chilly, barren jail cell. There was a cot in one corner with a thin, foul-smelling mattress stained with suspicious spots and a gray military-issue blanket like the one Kenny used on his bed in the Home. There was also a combination sink and commode in the opposite corner, the worst humiliation of all humiliations. There was a water tap on the top of the commode, but Sarah couldn't bring herself to drink from it, no matter how thirsty she felt. She couldn't stop thinking it was toilet water.

Her butt was numb from the cold floor and her legs were painfully cramped from being cuffed and restrained. She was still clad in undies and a frayed sweatshirt. Her captors hadn't bothered to give her pants. They had taken the cuffs off her wrists, but there was still a strong, polymer cable looped around her ankles several times and locked tightly with a combination lock. She had tried liked mad to get the cable off her ankle without success. Without her legs, she had no speed, not that she had anyplace to run to inside the cell. She sat motionless for the most part. The only time she bothered to move was when the soldier finally brought food to her cell. She had foolishly been expecting some meager C-rations or something vile and tasteless like bread-and-water. The solider, however, had brought a serving bowl full of steaming, gourmet-quality spaghetti bolognaise, a whole quarter-sheet cake with heavy frosting from a bakery, and a gallon of whole milk. Thinking about it, it made sense; if her captors were hired by the same people who funded the experiments in the Home, they would know what her nutritional needs were especially after using her powers for an extended amount of time: Carbs, fats, proteins, and sugar.

She dove into the food like a wild animal, shoveling the first mouthful into her face with her bare hand. The sauce burned her skin and her tongue, but she was too hungry to care. Still with a mouthful of spaghetti, she uncapped the milk and drank back several slugs. Without pausing to get a full breath, she scooped a handful of cake with her free hand and slammed that into her mouth as well, savoring the sugary, buttery richness.

The soldier opened the door again and waved a roll of paper towels at her. "We did think to provide you with a fork, you know." He tossed in the roll and the door clanked closed behind him, a heavy lock spinning into place with an ominous, final-sounding clack.

Sarah devoured the food. She didn't stop eating until it was all gone and she felt almost sickeningly full. She drank the entire gallon of milk. She remembered reading somewhere that drinking a gallon of milk in an hour was supposed to be physically impossible. She had drunk a gallon in under thirty minutes. Of course, she had also been running faster than the speed of sound not that long ago, so impossible was now a negotiable term.

There were voices outside of her cell, faint voices that drifted down the corridor. The door was made from the same heavy iron as the walls and floors, but there was a small, barred window near head height. Every half hour, like clockwork, a pair of eyes would glance into her room to make sure she was still there and she hadn't hung herself or choked on her own tongue. There were no other windows in the cell and the only light was provided by a fluorescent bulb in the ceiling covered by a metal cage and thick Plexiglas. It bathed the room in a somber, yellow light and filled the room with a constant buzzing drone.