Tuners

by Aaron Frale

  “Where is the Tuner?” the man demanded and drove the blade deeper.

  “I don’t know—” His father choked and spat up blood. Jon crept into the room. He lifted the bat above his head and slunk towards the men torturing his dad.

  “You cannot fight them,” Jon’s dad blew the element of surprise. “You must run! Jon! Run!”

  The men turned around and saw Jon. They tossed his dad headfirst into his workbench, and blood went everywhere. Jon backpedaled into the house. He slammed the workshop door behind him and locked it. A blade stabbed through the door, and Jon dashed down the hallway towards the kitchen. He knew there was a set of knives he could use. Despite his dad’s advice about not fighting them, he didn’t really have a better plan. The black streaks outside were probably more of the flunkies.

  He was about to dial 911 as he ran when two more purple flashes appeared between him and the kitchen. The scarred people in the bone armor ejected their weapons and charged Jon. From behind, the others were almost through the workshop door. Jon lifted his baseball bat. At least he’d die standing on his own two feet.

  Just as Jon prepared to go down swinging, the skylight in his double height living room shattered, and a girl jumped through and landed on the floor in between Jon and his attackers. She was wearing a blue plaid skirt and a white button-up shirt. She had two daggers and was crouched in an attack stance. Jon recognized her at once. It was the girl from the mall.

  The assailants seemed to recognize her too. They redirected their attack. Two more appeared behind her. The men and women in bone armor cried out and attacked. The girl in the plaid skirt was quick. No sooner had she slashed the throat of one, but she had vaulted off the woman she had downed and stabbed the other two in the head. She threw her dagger at the fourth, and it stuck in his neck as he tumbled to the floor at Jon’s feet.

  The workshop door burst open, and Jon whipped around to the attackers from behind, only to see a black guy in trendy clothing probably around the same age as Jon. He twirled a pair of nunchucks, deflecting the blows of all three of the people who had assaulted Jon’s father. The kid was quick. His hands blurred at the speed he was moving. The strikes that took out two of the foes were so fast they streaked through the air.

  The third one turned and ran back to the workshop. A second after he disappeared, he appeared again, impaled by a sword. The weapon slid out, and his body dropped to the floor. From around the corner, a girl with olive skin tone and dark curly hair held a bloody katana. She wore clothes that exposed her midriff. Jon noticed that the blade from the bone armored man was damaged as if it had been crushed on a hard surface. There was a bruise on her stomach where the edge must have impacted her skin. The black man went to comfort her, and she pushed him away.

  “I’m fine,” she said, inspecting the bruise. “I guess I won’t break out the summer wardrobe just yet.”

  She wiped down her sword and sheathed her weapons. Before Jon was able to say anything, there was a loud crash at his front door. The door flew off its hinges and landed a few feet away. Another teen, a large white guy with long hair wearing a heavy metal tee-shirt burst through the hole where the front door used to be. He held a war hammer that was twice the size of him.

  “Where’s the meat! Because it needs tenderizing!” the guy yelled with his war hammer at the ready.

  “We already took care of them, Meathook,” the girl from the mall said. “And you really need a better line.”

  “Come on, Hailey. They’ll call me Meathook, the tenderizer.”

  Hailey rolled her eyes.

  Before she could say anything to Jon, he came to his senses. “Dad!” he yelled and pushed past the people in the hallway and into the workshop. The scene was terrible. Jon’s dad lay on the floor in a pool of his own blood. Jon shouted and knelt by his father. His father breathed in quick short gasps.

  The black guy was there by Jon’s side. “If you want him to live, you’re going to do everything I’m going to say. DeAndre, by the way,” he said and held out his hand.

  “Jon,” Jon could barely say.

  “Okay, Jon, now I want you to apply pressure here. Patel, get over here.”

  The girl with the katana and stomach bruise knelt by their side.

  “Find Ludie,” DeAndre commanded. “We need his supplies.”

  “On it,” Patel said and took off running.

  “Jon,” DeAndre said, “we need to wrap the wound. Do you have bedsheets?”

  “I’ll call 911,” Jon said.

  “No,” DeAndre said. “There is nothing they can do for you. You will not be safe in a hospital.”

  “But—”

  “Just listen to me!”

  “There are bedsheets down the hall in the linen closet,” Jon said.

  Before Jon could say or do anything else, DeAndre was gone and back with bedsheets. They wrapped his father’s head in the sheets and went for his gut next.

  After the wound was secure, Patel arrived with a pudgy white kid. He was younger than all of them and out of breath.

  Ludie didn’t carry a weapon, but he certainly had enough supplies. He was wearing a backpack, several fanny packs, arm packs, and even leg packs. The kid pulled a syringe from one and several bandages from another. He went to work on Jon’s dad with equipment that came from the various bags.

  DeAndre pulled Jon away and said, “Let him work. The kid’s a genius.”

  Hailey and Meathook sauntered into the room. They seemed to be in the middle of a light-hearted argument.

  Meathook asked while he swung around a giant hammer, “What if I call it my War Hammer of Thunder?”

  “No,” Hailey said.

  “Justice?”

  “No.”

  “Kill Painer.”

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “Kill Painer. It kills and causes pain.”

  “Isn’t dying painful? And why can’t you just call it a war hammer!”

  Jon cut them off. “Who the hell are you people?”

  Before she could answer, Jon’s dad cried out in pain, and they turned their focus to the situation at hand.

  Ludie turned to Hailey and said, “There isn’t much I can do for him here. We’re going to have to tune him back to HQ.”

  “You know how to drive a car?” Hailey asked.

  “Yeah, but I don’t have my license. My dad won’t let me get it till I turn eighteen,” Jon said.

  “Can you get us to the mall?” Hailey asked.

  “Yeah, but shouldn’t we be getting him to the hospital?”

  “Look, you’re lucky we caught your little traffic stunt earlier today on the u-net scanners. If I hadn’t pieced together that it was you from the mall last week, we might not have even been here to save you, much less your father. Do what we say now, and you can ask all the questions you want later.”

  “You saw me run from that guy?” Jon asked.

  “Well, actually,” Ludie said, “we saw the video of the man disappearing on YouTube, and you were hanging on the bus in the background. I had to delete it with the para-algorithmic—”

  “What did I say about questions?” Hailey said.

  “I’ll get my father’s keys,” Jon said and went to his dad’s room.

  7

  Jon couldn’t fathom what was happening. He was driving his dad’s SUV illegally to a mall where he was not allowed to go anymore with a group of people who were weirder than the freak with the hoodie from earlier. To top it off, his dad was groaning and wounded in the backseat.

  Jon was surprised they didn’t get pulled over. He always seemed to have a target on his back. Security for almost every store followed him around like he had nothing better to do than shoplift. Guards had threatened to call the cops on Jon plenty of times when they caught him or his friends loitering. The only time he had a run-in with the police was when Rashaun had found an abandoned insane asylum. They were taking pictures and screwing around when the officers showed up. They said there was
gang activity in the area and told them it wasn’t a safe place to play. At thirteen, he felt insulted by the use of the word play.

  Now that he was seventeen, if a cop pulled him over, they wouldn’t be so nice. Jon just wanted to get to the mall, drop these nutty people off, and then get to the hospital. He thought about just driving to the hospital anyway, but he saw how good they were with their weapons. Jon wouldn’t last long in a fight.

  He couldn’t help but wonder if he was going insane and was really just driving by himself with his dad. Maybe these people were his delusions. Either way, he didn’t seem to have much of a choice in the matter. Hailey’s crew had saved him, and the least he could do was humor her. Besides, he didn’t want to be too far from her if more of those cleaved brow jerks appeared again. If the bone armored men were just delusions too, then those phantoms packed quite a punch.

  The mall parking lot was completely empty at night. The only thing that could be seen were headlights of the night patrolman who was on the other side of the place from their location. Jon turned off his lights and pulled up to one of the doors. They all piled out of the car. Patel and DeAndre carried Jon’s father on a makeshift stretcher; so much for driving away. Jon hopped out and followed them.

  They all slunk up to the entryway. It was locked. Hailey turned to Meathook and said, “Meathook.”

  Meathook smiled and pulled out his war hammer. “With pleasure.”

  He was about to swing at the glass door when Jon said, “Wait! Wait! There’s an alarm. Do you want the cops showing up?”

  “You have a good point. They probably won’t make it in time, but remember 57b?” Hailey said.

  “How can I forget?” Meathook said. “I spent all night in that prison before Hector could bail us out.”

  “You know what to do, Ludie,” Hailey said.

  Ludie nodded and pulled out some tools from his fanny packs. He poked at a sensor on the door and noodled around for a moment. He pulled out a phone similar to Hailey’s and connected it to the sensor with a wire. After a few moments, there was a spark. Ludie stepped away, and Hailey nodded.

  Before Jon could say anything, Meathook smashed the door with his war hammer, and glass flew everywhere. The metal head stepped inside, and his boots crunched the glass. He swung again and smashed through the inner set of doors. To Jon’s surprise, there was no alarm.

  They all entered the mall. It was dark and spooky at night. Most of the stores had metal gates covering the fronts. Even the kiosks had security seals. There wasn’t much they could do at night other than wait for the night patrol person to make their way around to the door they had busted open and call the police on them. They pushed their way through anyway and went deeper.

  Jon was about to ask them what the hell they were supposed to be doing when Hailey stopped them in front of the closed up Forever 21 and pulled her pink headphones from her pocket. The rest of the gang did the same. They all had a different pair of headphones. DeAndre had large ones like a DJ would use. Patel had ones that were a single band that wrapped around the back of her head. Meathook’s had skulls. Ludie wore a pair of gamer headphones complete with mouthpiece for screaming out orders during the heat of action.

  “What are you—” Jon began, and Hailey shushed him. They all sat in silence, listening. After a while, Meathook took off his headphones and said, “Man, I got nothing.”

  “Me neither,” DeAndre said, slinging his pair around his neck. “Nothing.”

  The others nodded in agreement. Hailey swore and yelled, “It was here earlier!”

  Ludie said, “You know the Einstein-Rosen bridges aren’t stable. If we wait for—”

  “We don’t have another day. This guy might not last another hour.” Hailey nodded toward Jon’s dad and swore again.

  Jon thought for a moment and realized something. “You’re listening for that noise. The static.”

  The shock curled up on Hailey’s face. She asked, “How do you know about it?”

  “I heard it in the store. Then again, right before the attackers appeared in my house.”

  “You heard it?”

  “You think he can tune?” Patel asked.

  There was a purple flash near the entrance where they had went into the mall. It was followed by another, then another. Soon, the bursts appeared throughout the area. This time, it wasn’t just one or two people sporting the cloven forehead look. It was dozens of them, and they had different weapons. Some had bows and arrows, others had battle axes, and another group appeared with clubs.

  The only common thread between them was the elite ones had stars carved into their foreheads. The meaner they looked, the more stars they had. They all dressed a little differently, too. Some had the bone armor, and others had black leather. Some were studded.

  The most peculiar detail was they also had some form of body mutilation. The group with battle axes were all missing their left ear. The ones with bows and arrow had a crisscross pattern cut into their face. The higher ranked ones had more mutilations.

  They appeared in substantial numbers each time. There would be an army in no time.

  “He better be able to tune. Put your headphones on!” Hailey yelled.

  “But—” Jon said.

  “Don’t question. Do it.”

  The closest group charged, and they were met with daggers, war hammers, and swords.

  Jon scrambled to yank his earbuds out of his pocket. He never felt like headphones would be something he’d have to pull out in a rush, so he fumbled every step of the way, untangling the cord, shoving them into the 1/8” jack on his phone. Meanwhile, the purple flashes happened quicker, and the thugs grew more numerous.

  Finally, when they were in place, Hailey yelled as she took out two of the freaks. “Play some music!”

  “What kind?” Jon asked while Meathook wacked a woman who almost gutted Jon with a battle-ax.

  “ANY KIND!”

  The gangs closed in around them with more appearing all the time. Patel chopped one down and was faced with two more. One attempted to stab the blade into her chest, but it shattered as soon as it hit her. She made short work of him. The third was joined by another two.

  Meathook swung his hammer, and it knocked at least a half dozen off in different directions. One of them flew a few stores away and crashed into the metal gate for Eddie Bauer. A display of hiking sports bottles toppled from the impact. DeAndre spun his nunchucks at lightning-quick speed, deflecting arrows being shot into the fray.

  Jon hit his random playlist, and Ridin’ by Chamillionaire blared on his headphones. More enemies appeared, and there was a moment where he thought they would be overwhelmed. Hailey kicked one, stabbed another, and dodged two-blade swipes. She yelled loud enough to be heard over Jon’s music, “Now concentrate. Listen for the hum. It will be in the background, just under the music.”

  Hailey flipped over another and used the guy as a human shield against an attack. Meathook clobbered another group and sent them flying down the concourse. Ludie pulled out a rod from his pouch and clunked it over the head of one who got too close. Jon closed his eyes and concentrated on the song.

  He could hear it. Just below the lowest bass note, just above the high treble, and between the clap of the drums. There was the sound of static. It had been there his whole life, but he didn’t notice it till now. He could still hear the music, but it was like something was hiding underneath the music, and now Jon could hear it.

  He opened his eyes. Patel deflected more blows with her body and gutted more thugs. DeAndre darted around at incredible speeds helping where the battle was thin. Hailey was the most graceful one of them all. She moved like a dancer, her body in tune with the music. For a brief moment, Jon forgot about the battle and saw her.

  “What direction is it?” Hailey yelled at Jon.

  “What?” Jon asked.

  “The noise, what direction is it coming from?”

  Jon concentrated again. He tuned out the music and focused on the noise. Fo
r a moment, the music and the sound of the battle faded away, and all that was left was the noise. He could hear it. It pulsed in the background.

  “That way!” Jon pointed down the mall toward the food court and put down his skateboard.

  Meathook knocked a swath of the thugs out of the way. Ludie pulled out five squares from his belt. He tossed them to the floor, and they unfolded into skateboards.

  “No way,” Jon said. Meathook scooped up Jon’s father and jumped on the board. It sagged under his weight. The others jumped on their boards, and DeAndre took the rear, using his super-speed to deflect oncoming attacks.

  “Lead the way,” Hailey said and motioned for Jon.

  Jon concentrated again on the static in his headphones. He kicked off on the skateboard and led them forward. Purple flashes puffed into existence around them. The mall was filling up with more and more of the crazies. Soon, there would be so much of the freaks that even Meathook’s hammer couldn’t knock them all away.

  As they rode towards the food court, the static got louder and louder. Once they were close, the noise was so evident it was like he heard the sound of two different radio stations competing for the same airwave frequency. One with the dead signal, and the other playing his song. The effect was most potent when they got to a particular spot in the middle of the food court. Jon stopped them and told them whatever they were looking for was here.

  The army that had appeared in the mall had not caught up with them yet. The purple flashes were still depositing soldiers, but they were behind as if someone was zeroing in on their location each time they teleported troops.

  Hailey pulled out her phone and swiped at the strange app Jon had seen her use the first time he saw her. She tapped in frustration and asked, “Are you sure?”

  Jon said, “Yeah, It’s strongest here.”