Super Human Read online

  “I’m scared.”

  “I know. Take my hand.”

  After a moment Lance felt a small trembling hand settle into his. “That’s good. Dylan, where’s your mom and dad?”

  “At home. They’re sick. I came out to get help. Then I saw the big boys and I got scared so I came in here.”

  I can’t just leave him. “Dylan, is there a back way out?”

  “Yeah, but I couldn’t open the door.”

  Lance got to his feet. “Show me.”

  He felt the boy stand up and lead him through the shop. “You have to tell me if I’m going to bump into anything, OK?”

  “OK,” Dylan said.

  Lance’s knees clipped the seat of a chair. “Ouch! Like that chair.”

  “Sorry. It’s back here.”

  He felt his left shoulder brush a doorjamb. “Is this a storeroom or something?”

  “Yeah.” Dylan pulled Lance’s hand to the left. “Mind the boxes. The door is here. In front of you.”

  “I’m going to let go, but you stay next to me, all right?” Lance reached out carefully with both hands, and felt the varnished surface of a wooden door. He groped around for the handle, gave it an experimental tug. “Locked. Dylan, can you see any keys?”

  “No. I already looked.”

  “Of course you did. Sorry. But is there a window?”

  “Yeah, but it’s too high. It’s right up at the ceiling and it’s very small.”

  “OK, forget that.” If I had my tools I might be able to pick the lock. His fingers probed the handle and the surface of the lock. Feels like a Solidsecure two-twenty. “Dylan, I need some stiff metal wire. Can you see any paper clips or—”

  From the main store came the sound of heavy footsteps crunching on the broken glass.

  The boy gasped and ducked behind Lance.

  Lance crouched down next to him and whispered, “What can you see?”

  “Men. They have guns.”

  “Oh great. . . . OK, just stick close to me and play along with whatever I say, all right?” They could be the army, or they could be working with Slaughter.

  Then Lance heard a voice from the far side of the room. “Who are you?”

  “Jason Myers,” Lance replied. “And this is Dylan. Who are you? What’s going on?”

  Another voice quietly said, “Not one of Dalton’s crew.”

  “You sure?”

  “Look at him. He’s just about wet his pants.”

  Bingo! Lance thought. We might just get out of this if I play the sympathy card. Aloud, he said, “Help us, please. We came out to get help for our parents. They’re sick. We got trapped in here. I . . . I’m blind. I lost my cane somewhere.”

  The second voice said, “Forget him. Let’s go.”

  “No, wait!” Lance called. “Please! We can’t get out!”

  “We don’t have time for this.”

  The first voice: “Listen, kid. The whole world is sick, understood? Just stay here until the fighting is over and you should be safe.”

  “Who are you? You sound like adults—how come you’re not sick?” They’ve got to be part of The Helotry, Lance thought.

  “We’re the ones who are going to make everything better,” the man said.

  Lance heard the static-filled squawk of a radio voice: “Team eight, come in. What’s your position?”

  “Bookstore on Main, Mr. Remington,” the second man replied. “All clear. Just civilians.”

  “Superhumans are on the run. Slaughter’s got Dalton, and we’re tracking two black kids. The white boy is still unaccounted for—he could be with the local teens. They’ve scattered, but they should be easy to round up. Secure the area in case the boy returns.”

  “Will do.” The radio clicked off.

  Lance heard the man approach, and felt Dylan shrink farther behind him. The boy was trembling.

  “Did you see a guy about your age with the others?” The man asked.

  “No. I can’t see anything.”

  “Oh. Right. Sorry. What about you?”

  Lance sensed Dylan shaking his head, and said, “We’ve been hiding out here for hours.” He decided to take a chance. “Are . . . Are you going to hurt us?”

  “Now why would you think that?” The voice was gentle, sounding a little surprised at the question. “No, we’ll take you someplace safe. Trust me: You have nothing to worry about.”

  Lance faked a sigh of relief. “Good, thank you.” He put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Me and my brother here were worried that the world was coming to an end or something. All the adults are sick but if you’re OK then there must be a cure, right?”

  The man didn’t reply.

  “Are you still there?” Lance asked.

  “Oh, I’m still here.” His voice was heavy with sarcasm. “I’m not going anywhere, Mr. McKendrick.”

  Lance stiffened. How did he know? “I’m Jason Myers. Who’s this McWhatever guy?”

  “So Dylan here is your brother?”

  Aw no! Stupid, stupid, stupid! Should have asked him what he looked like! “Uh . . . Yeah,” Lance said quickly. “We’re adopted. Mom and Dad can’t have kids of their own.”

  “Is that so?” There was the clear metallic click of a gun being cocked. “You look like a smart kid. But you’re clearly not smart enough to tell when a name is androgynous. Dylan’s a girl.”

  A few minutes earlier . . .

  Abby threw Lance through the truck’s shattered windshield, grabbed Thunder’s arm, and pitched herself forward and out, dragging Thunder behind her.

  She pushed Thunder aside and ducked as a long metal pole swung toward her head. It hit the truck hard enough to tear a gash in the radiator. She grabbed for the pole but the man on the other end let go and ran. She pulled her sword from its sheath on her back and quickly looked around. The teenagers had already fled, Roz was gone, Lance was on his hands and knees.

  Beside her, Thunder said, “People coming . . . Dozens of them.” He shouted, “Lance! Get out of here!”

  Abby passed him the steel pole. “Back-to-back, OK? We’ve got to keep them busy, give Lance some time to get away.”

  A metal-clad man rushed at her out of the shadows. Abby swung her sword in a backhanded arc. Its blunt edge clanged against the man’s armored chest and he collapsed to the side, smacked his head against the truck’s remaining headlight—cracking the headlight open—and toppled over. Almost total darkness flooded over them. Oh great! OK, maybe we can’t see them but then they can’t see us either!

  She heard footsteps shuffling to her right, and in the faint orange light from the burning car in the town square she had a glimpse of a large metal weapon in the man’s hands and twin glints reflected in a pair of thick goggles. Night-vision goggles—they can see us!

  There was a muffled ptooff of compressed air, and a thick, short cable with steel spikes on each end thudded into the front of the truck only inches away from her right leg. The man cocked the cable-weapon and fired again, but this time Abby knew what to expect. She slashed out with her sword and sliced the cable in two.

  Then in the half-light she saw four—maybe five—more armored men, all with the same kind of weapon.

  Trying to pin us! “Thunder, get down!” She threw herself backward as the men fired in unison, collided with Thunder, and knocked him flat.

  Take them a couple of seconds to reload . . . “You all right?”

  Thunder was already getting to his feet, the steel pole still in his hands. “Yeah. We need to get out of here!”

  She pulled the pole from his grip. “Stay behind me and keep low. I’m better with this sort of thing than you are.”

  “No arguments.”

  Abby slipped her sword back into its scabbard, and holding the pole like a quarterstaff she rushed at the armed men.

  She spun, clipped one of the men in the side of his helmet, knocking off his goggles, jabbed another in the stomach. The remaining three backed away, and one of them fired. Abby knocke
d the spiked cable out of the air, jumped, slammed the end of the pole into the ground, and vaulted over the men.

  Their reactions were fast, but not fast enough: Abby whirled the pole over her head and brought it down hard on one man’s shoulder—she heard something inside him crack—then whipped the other end about and struck one of his colleagues in the knees. The man screamed.

  Abby moved toward the last of them, but he was already on the ground, whimpering, his body convulsing, his hands desperately scrabbling to pull off his helmet.

  “Redirected that guy’s screams,” Thunder said as he ran toward her. There was something round and metal in his hands—one of the men’s helmets. “Amplified them too.” He pulled the helmet on over his mask. “OK, now I can see.... Y’know, the armor these guys are wearing is a lot like Paragon’s. Let’s pick up Lance and get out of here.”

  “But Roz . . .”

  “She’ll be OK.” Thunder looked about. “More of them coming.”

  “You’re sure about Roz?”

  Thunder leaned down and grabbed the weapon from the screaming man’s hands. “No. But we have to get to the prison, free Pyrokine. That’s what she’d tell us to do.” He tilted his head from side to side. “They’re coming from everywhere!” He paused again. “We should leave Lance. If they all follow us he might be able to get away. How’s your sense of direction?”

  “I remember from the map which way the prison is,” Abby said.

  “Lead the way.”

  Abby handed the steel pole to Thunder and once more drew her sword. They ran past the truck and into the town square.

  How did they find us? Abby wondered. Could Slaughter have put a tracking device in the truck? No, more likely they followed the only truck that was moving.

  “Down!” Thunder shouted. Abby dropped flat to the ground as the store they were passing was bombarded with a dozen spiked cables. The store’s windows and door shattered inward.

  The square was suddenly filled with armored men, all aiming the same powerful-looking weapons.

  Then a dark figure descended from the sky, settled gently on the hood of the burning car. As they watched, the fire began to grow. Flames licked at the dark figure’s feet, quickly spread up his legs until his whole body was engulfed.

  The burning man stepped off the car’s hood and landed lightly on the ground.

  He walked toward them, leaving a trail of fiery footprints.

  Oh no. . . . Abby dry-swallowed. “Thunder . . . Run!”

  Roz Dalton was dreaming. Shocking, violent dreams that made no sense but left her feeling sick, betrayed, hurt physically and emotionally. It was cold—as cold as last winter’s holiday in Alaska—and there was a woolen scarf around her neck. But the scarf was too tight and she couldn’t loosen it.

  Unbidden and unwanted, an overwhelming sense of loss and abandonment filled her mind, and she realized that for the first time in as long as she could remember, she was crying for her parents, and . . . for someone else, but she couldn’t remember who that was.

  And then the scarf around her neck tightened once more, but the scarf was cold and hard and strong, and finally Roz came awake.

  Slaughter had her hands around Roz’s throat, and Roz knew that they were thousands of feet above the ground.

  Slaughter had flown straight up. In seconds they had passed through the clouds and now—as Roz’s vision finally began to clear—she realized she was looking up at the stars.

  Slaughter was squeezing as hard as she could, and it was all Roz could do to keep up her telekinetic shield.

  “Die!” Slaughter said. “Die, damn you!”

  Roz clenched her fists and struck at the woman, but it was like punching a bronze statue.

  “All right,” Slaughter said through gritted teeth. “I can’t strangle you, but I can hold you up here until you suffocate. Or maybe I’ll do this.” She let go of Roz’s neck with one hand and slammed her fist into Roz’s stomach. “Hurts, doesn’t it? Here’s another one.” She punched again.

  Roz twisted aside, deflecting most of the force. “Why are you doing this?” Her voice was weak, barely audible even to herself.

  Slaughter’s expression of fury faded into puzzlement, as though she had never encountered the question before. “What? Because you and your friends are in the way!”

  “The Helotry—” Roz began.

  Slaughter’s grip loosened. “How do you know that word?”

  “We know everything,” Roz lied. “You’re trying to bring back the Fifth King.”

  Slaughter stared at her. “How do you know?” she demanded. “You have no telepathic powers—and not even your brother is strong enough to read my mind!”

  “Your plan is going to fail. The Fifth King is a myth. And even if he was real, he’s been dead for thousands of years. Nothing you do is going to change that.”

  “Little girl, you are so wrong it’s almost funny. We are bringing him back.”

  “What are you going to do? Clone him or something?”

  Slaughter sneered. “Clone him? No, cloning technology is years away from being feasible. Besides, we’d need a sample of his DNA, and he was destroyed in a pillar of fire. Maybe there aren’t too many verifiable facts about the Fifth King, but that one we do know. His death was witnessed by thousands of people, and all their stories correlate. We know precisely where and when he died. And if you have that sort of information, and you’ve got the right sort of power source and the people smart enough to control it, you can do what we’re going to do.”

  She paused, and Roz knew it was only for effect.

  “And what’s that? What is The Helotry’s grand plan?”

  “We’re going to tear open a hole in space and time. In the last second before the Fifth King dies, we’re going to snatch him out of the past.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Abby knew she had no choice: She had to leave Thunder behind. He just wasn’t fast enough to keep up with her.

  As she raced along the tree-lined avenue she tried to console herself that it hadn’t been her idea. When the armored men began to swarm after them, Thunder had told her to go on. She’d looked back, seen him standing in the road as the burning man approached, but his voice appeared next to her: “I’ll be OK. Just go. Get to the prison.”

  That was only a few minutes ago, but now Abby felt like she’d never been so alone.

  The Helotry’s men were on the ground; at least that was something in her favor. If they’d been in an aircraft, she wouldn’t have stood a chance of escaping them.

  Now they were close behind, chasing her down in an eight-wheeled armored vehicle that wasn’t much smaller than a school bus.

  The streetlights were still out, but some of the houses on each side had candles in their windows and the vehicle’s headlights behind her illuminated the road ahead. Abby chased her own shadow.

  At least they’re not trying to kill us, she thought, and then wondered why that was. Probably Slaughter wants to kill us herself.

  Abby spotted a church coming up on the left: She vaulted its closed gates and ran through the empty parking lot. Behind her, she heard the armored car’s brakes squeal, then its engine revved loudly, followed by a splintering crash as it rammed the gates.

  There was a high wall at the back of the church. She quickly scaled it and found herself in someone’s backyard.

  “Abby? Can you hear me?” a disembodied voice said.

  “I hear you, Thunder.”

  “Good. I’ve got that skinhead’s motorbike and I’m heading back out of the town the way we came in. I’ve got two Boxers after me.”

  “Boxers?” Abby asked.

  “Armored vehicles. Big, fast. Look like tanks but with wheels instead of tracks.”

  “There’s one after me too.”

  “I’ve stopped one of them already,” Thunder said. “Blasted it with sound waves.”

  Abby vaulted over a fence into another backyard and a friendly German Shepherd bounded up to her. She said, “T
here’s a good boy!” and kept running.

  “Uh. . . . Thanks, I think,” Thunder said.

  She leaped onto a low shed, over the wall, and into nextdoor’s garden.

  “You have to stop the Boxer, Abby. You’re a lot faster than they are on foot. Get to the—Oh man! That burning guy is behind me. He’s not chasing me, but he’s pointing this way—letting the others know where I am! Who is he?”

  “I don’t know,” Abby said. “Dioxin, maybe. Doesn’t he burn?” Lance would know, she thought. He knows them all. “Thunder, if we don’t make it . . .”

  “If we don’t make it, then we’re going to take down as many of these guys as we can, all right?”

  “That’s exactly what I was going to say. Good luck.”

  “You too.”

  A few minutes later, Abby splashed across a shallow ornamental pond, crashed through a hedge, and found herself back on the road. She slowed to a stop. She was standing at a crossroads, and there was no sign of the armored car. Yes! Lost them! OK. . . . Town’s back that way, which means—

  She smiled. Off to the left, on the far side of a wide field, there was a point of light through the trees. The prison. Roz said it would have its own generators.

  Abby left a long furrow in the high grass as she crossed the field, then she was standing in front of Oak Grove Prison.

  Beyond a high razor-wire fence, its featureless stone walls were yellow-orange from lights placed just beneath the roof. The building was bigger than she’d expected: At least three hundred yards long, and maybe five stories high—though she couldn’t be sure, as there were no windows by which to judge.

  Her sword cut a vertical slash in the fence, and she climbed through, expecting alarms to break out at any moment. She darted up to the wall, pressed her back flat against it, started shuffling sideways. She’d seen characters do this in prison-break movies, but she wasn’t entirely sure whether it would make any difference.

  There didn’t seem to be any guards. How many of them have been hit by the plague?

  She reached a corner and, keeping her back to the wall, Abby cautiously peered around it. If Pyrokine is the only one who’s not an adult, then they could all be—Aw no!