by Baron Sord
He went flying backward twenty feet.
The impact sent me tumbling and I bounced across the pavement like I’d fallen out of speeding car. I skidded down the alley at an angle and banged into a brick wall, grinding my back against it until I stopped. It took me a moment to shake the shock off, but I wasn’t hurt. Not a bit. I might hurt later, but I’d worry about that then.
I stood up and—
POP!
POP!
POP!
Front Thug shot me with a suppressed automatic pistol from point blank range. All three rounds pounded into my chest, throwing me backward. I hit the ground hard and stared up at the stars.
That was it.
I was dead.
One of those bullets had hit my heart for sure.
The stars above were the last thing I would ever see.
At least they were beautiful.
—: Chapter 14 :—
“Are you okay?” Front Thug said as he ran over to help Bowling Ball thug.
Bowling Ball coughed, “Did a truck hit me? What the fuck was that?”
“That guy. He fucking ran right over you.”
“Yeah he did. Ow! Fuck. My guts. He busted something good.”
“You gotta stand up, man. We gotta get outta here. That guy is dead. The cops are gonna be here any second.”
“Shit,” Bowling Ball hissed. “This is worse than a hernia.” He coughed hard.
“Fuck. Is that blood?”
“Huh?” Bowling Ball coughed again and wiped his mouth. Looked at his hand. “Oh shit. It is. What the hell? That guy fucking killed me.”
“No, I killed him,” Front Thug said. “We gotta get you back to base. Let the Doc fix you up. You’re gonna be okay if you get your ass up outta here. If you don’t, your ass is getting locked up. Now move, soldier! Move!”
“Okay, okay!” Bowling Ball was in excruciating pain.
I wasn’t in any pain.
I sat up.
Felt my chest.
Something hard.
Three somethings hard.
I lifted my T-shirt.
Clearly visible under the street light where I lay, three hollow-point slugs were mushroomed against my skin. They hadn’t gone in.
What the actual fuck?
I peeled one of the bullets off my skin and looked at it in the faint glow coming from the nearest street light. Based on the mass of metal, it was a large caliber. At least a 10mm or a .45. It should’ve punched a hole in my chest the size of a fist. All three slugs should have.
I peeled the other two off.
Too bad Arnold wasn’t here to see this.
Turned out I was bulletproof.
I put all three slugs in my pants pocket. I’d show him later. Would he believe me? Only if the red marks on my chest didn’t fade. I touched them. Ow. They hurt. A lot.
When I stood up, pain blossomed around the impact points. Maybe the bullets had cracked my ribs. A small price to pay. I should be dead, not in minor pain.
“You missed!” Bowling Ball grunted. “I thought you said you hit him?!”
“I did!” Front Thug said. “Three times! Point blank!”
“No, you missed,” Bowling Ball said with authority, looking straight at me.
Now that I was looking at Bowling Ball, he didn’t look at all like Chuck Weaver. Had I imagined that?
“I won’t miss this time,” Front Thug growled. He definitely looked like Chuck Weaver as he raised his suppressed pistol and strode toward me, his body turned sideways in a shooter’s stance, both hands holding the gun in a tactical crouch as he heel-toed smoothly across the pavement.
POP!
POP!
The first shot hit my shoulder.
Spent brass tinkled on the concrete.
The second shot hit my neck.
That knocked me flat.
My head banged against the ground.
Never heard the second casing land because my ears were ringing from the bullet to my neck. Must’ve hit my carotid dead on. I’d be lucky if the pressure of the impact shockwave didn’t give me a brain hemorrhage in the next two seconds.
“Finish his ass!” Bowling Ball grunted.
Seconds later, I was staring up at Front Thug.
“You got a vest under there?” He looked pissed. Chuck Weaver pissed. “You should be dead.”
I groaned.
The barrel of the big suppressor hovered in front of me like a midnight eclipse.
I smirked at him.
“You think this is funny?” He kicked me in the side, just like Chuck Weaver and his pals had.
“Fuck you, Chuck.” I snickered softly, the ringing in my ears already fading.
“Fuck me? Fuck you, asshole!” He dropped a knee into my chest.
I grunted.
He scowled, “How’d that feel? You want some more?” He slammed his knee into me again and sat down on my chest. Jammed the barrel of the suppressor against my nose, grinding it into the skin. “I’m gonna blow a hole in your fucking head a mile wide, asshole. You ain’t got no vest there, do you?”
I smiled at him. In a raspy voice, I said, “Go for it, Chuck.” That neck shot earlier must’ve hit my voice box because talking out loud burned my throat.
“Your vest isn’t gonna protect your face, dumbfuck.” He reached down and patted my chest. “Hey. You ain’t wearing no vest. What the fuck?”
“Surprise, surprise.”
He pressed the suppressor against my eye socket. “Shut the fuck up, punk.”
“What’s taking so long?” Bowling Ball said, sounding a lot like Chuck Weaver.
“This guy ain’t got no vest! I hit his center mass three times! He should be hamburger meat.”
“You must’ve missed,” Bowling Ball said.
“I didn’t miss!”
“You did,” Bowling Ball insisted.
“Fuck it. I won’t miss this time.” He pushed the suppressor hard against my eye.
I squeezed it shut and wrinkled my brow protectively. White light erupted in my eye where the barrel was squishing it. It was incredibly painful. If I’d learned anything from being shot, it was that I wasn’t invulnerable. There was a good chance I would die right here.
I struggled to think.
My shoulder hurt like the bullet had hit bone and that neck shot had shaken me up good. How was I going to get out of this? Pudgy Batman wasn’t going to jump from the dumpster and whip any Batarangs at these guys and save me.
Front Thug hissed, “Kiss your life goodbye, fuck stick.”
I did the first thing that came to mind: grabbed Front Thug’s ankle and squeezed hard.
“What the fuck are you doing? Let go of my leg!” He tried to pull away but he couldn’t break my grip.
Then I sucked all the heat out of his body.
And I meant all of it.
Had a vague sense of it rushing down his leg and into my hand, and from there exploding throughout my body in a sizzling cloud of red hot heat energy.
“The fuck?!” He jumped up, but I held on, and he gasped, “Why is it so cold all of a sudden?”
Bowling Ball stared at him. He coughed and more blood bubbled from his mouth. He was in a bad way.
Front Thug shouted, “Let go of me!”
I didn’t.
“I said let go!”
POP!
This bullet hit my stomach.
POP!
This bullet hit my hip.
POP!
This bullet hit my thigh.
CRACKLE!
That was the sound Front Thug made as he suddenly stopped moving. Within seconds, he froze solid, turning into a motionless statue with grayish flesh and crystallized eyes. Water vapor in the air condensed all over his frigid skin and frozen clothes and shimmered in the faint streetlight. Even his gun was crystalline.
“What the…” Bowling Ball muttered, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. He had every right to be confused.
I had just done the
impossible.
I was also in extreme pain.
Got shot eight times. But I stood up. I was a little wobbly and I accidentally bumped into the frozen body of Front Thug. He tipped over slowly.
CRASH!
When he hit the concrete, he shattered into a thousand pieces that skidded everywhere.
“What did you do?” Bowling Ball gawked at me. He had a FwCK tattoo on his neck. Like the one I’d seen on those other thugs today. He was also utterly confused when he muttered, “I said, what’d you do?”
I was confused too, although I understood the basic physics of it.
How cold had I frozen Front Thug?
If I had to guess, well below zero. Hundreds of degrees below. In the range of liquid nitrogen, which hovered around -321 degrees F (or -196 C for you SI types). If not colder. Maybe even down near zero Kelvin, like I’d stopped the nuclear spin of all his atoms. That would account for his ice statue’s shattering demise, and the massive amount of heat energy I felt coursing through me now.
The sensation was much more intense than after I had extinguished the car fire. This time, I didn’t feel any painful itching or stretching of my muscles and skin. Now it felt good. Like heroin or something similar, not that I knew from experience. I smiled to myself, deliriously happy because Chuck Weaver finally got what he deserved.
Bowling Ball bent over to pick up a piece of his frozen friend where it lay in a pool of light.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I warned in a hoarse whisper, my voice rattling in my throat.
Bowling Ball touched the chunk with a single fingertip and hissed, “Ow, fuck! It burns!” He ripped his finger away. Literally ripped. “What the fuck did you do?”
“I told you not to touch it.”
What was I going to do with all this heat?
Maybe I should use it on Chuck Weaver #2 — aka Bowling Ball — and set him on fire. He certainly deserved it. Or should I suck away all his heat and knock him into a thousand pieces like his friend?
The question was, which would I enjoy more?
“Ohhh, my head…” Pudgy Batman groaned as he stood up in the dumpster on wobbly legs, holding his head with one hand and the side of the dumpster with the other. Styrofoam packing peanuts stuck to his Batman costume. They may have broken his fall, but they hadn’t stopped him from getting conked out.
I was relieved he wasn’t dead. I asked, “Are you okay?”
“What happened?” Pudgy looked between me and Bowling Ball where we stood in the light.
Bowling Ball continued to remind me of Chuck Weaver. He coughed, spitting blood. He reached into his black leather jacket.
I smirked, “What’s your next move, Chuck?”
“Huh?” Bowling Ball Chuck stared at me.
“If you pull a gun on me, it will be the last thing you ever do.”
Chuck the Thug hesitated, his bowling ball head scanning for exit options.
“I suggest you turn around and walk away. Now.”
Bowling Ball Chuck coughed wetly, “Yeah. Okay.” He turned and stumbled down the alley.
Pudgy Batman stared at me.
Despite my pain, I could think clearly. Shots had been fired. Someone was dead, albeit in too many unidentifiable pieces to count. Did I want to be here when the police arrived?
Hell no.
But I needed to pick up the shell casings. I was pretty sure all the bullets had hit me, but those spent casings were a dead giveaway there had been a shooting. I didn’t want to leave any evidence. If I remembered correctly, Ice Statue had shot me eight times.
“Are you okay?” I asked Pudgy as I searched between ice chunks and picked up brass. Already had four shell casings in hand.
“I don’t know,” Pudgy sighed.
“Can you drive?” Picked up another two casings.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you have a concussion?” Another casing made seven.
“Ow. It feels like it. What are you doing?”
“Nothing. Do I need to take you to a hospital?”
“Maybe you better.”
With great relief, I found the eighth casing and pocketed them all. I said, “Where’s your car?”
“My car?” Pudgy grimaced, “This again? Are you one of these jerks too?”
“No. You can trust me. I’m trying to help. Do you want me to walk you to a hospital?”
“Not really,” he winced as he gingerly touched his head. “I’d rather drive.”
“Are you up for driving? You look a little sick. If you have a concussion, you probably shouldn’t drive.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“I can drive you if you want. But I don’t have a car,” I lied. “Where’s yours?”
“A couple blocks from here. Can you help me out of this dumpster?”
“Yeah.”
After lifting him out, which was easy despite his weight, I followed him to his car a few blocks away. He opened the driver door for me then went around to the passenger side.
“Keys?” I asked.
He smirked, “I’ll give them to you after I get in. I’m not that dumb.”
“Fair enough.” I climbed into the driver’s seat and he handed me the keys. Yet another streetlight shone through the front windshield, painting both of us with plenty of light.
He asked, “What’s that on your neck?”
I slapped my hand over the flattened bullet. I’d forgotten it was visible, unlike the other bullets, which were presumably stuck to my skin under my T-shirt somewhere. “It’s a tattoo,” I lied.
“Oh.” He sniffed in disgust and said, “What’s that smell? Is something burning? Like plastic or something?”
I smelled it too. Burning nylon.
“Is that coming from you?”
“Huh? No,” I said, suddenly realizing my excess heat from Ice Statue was cooking the seat, which was most likely made of nylon fibers. My clothes weren’t on fire, which made sense. Nylon melted at 428 F (220 C) and emitted a foul odor. Cotton didn’t melt, but it auto-ignited around 765 F (407 C). Therefore, I didn’t have to worry about my clothes spontaneously bursting into flames, but I did have to worry about the melting smell of nylon. I started the car and rolled down all four power windows at the same time. “It must be a fire near here. Probably some plastic factory went up in flames,” I lied.
“Oh,” he said. “That’s awful. That must be why it’s so hot outside.”
“Yeah,” I lied. I didn’t remember it being hot outside, but I was apparently turning the inside of Pudgy’s car into a 428 F degree oven. “We better get you to the fire station. Quick.” For his sake and the sake of his car, which I did not want to set on fire.
“It’s really hot,” Pudgy said uncomfortably.
“It’s probably the fire. And your concussion,” I lied. “I’ll crank the A/C.” I did, set it to blasting.
“Thanks. Much better,” he sighed and leaned his head against his headrest and closed his eyes.
“Don’t go to sleep,” I said. “Not if you have a concussion.”
“Yeah,” he said, struggling to keep his eyes open and focused as I drove.
A traffic light turned red and I stopped. The burning nylon smell was getting worse. I had to do something, but what?
I remembered how earlier I had transferred heat from my feet, where I had collected it from Arnold’s driveway, to my hand, where I had released it in a small flame. That meant I could shift the heat trapped in my body in a myriad of ways. I concentrated on moving it all to my front side, away from the seat. When it started drifting down my arms to my hands, I pulled it back into my chest. I didn’t want to melt the steering wheel.
The light turned green and I punched it. We needed to get to that fire station. Thankfully, no more red lights, and I knew where the station was. Once there, I jumped out of Pudgy’s car with it still idling and said, “They can take it from here.”
“Wait, where are you going?” Pudgy said sleepily. “This i
sn’t the hospital.”
“It’s a fire station. And I have to be somewhere. Sorry.”
“What was your name again?”
“Bob,” I lied.
“I don’t know how to thank you, Bob. You saved my life.”
“All in a day’s work. Take care of yourself.”
“Hey, are you glowing?”
“What?”
“You look like you’re glowing orange. Your face and your arms and legs.”
“It’s the streetlights.”
“No, you’re orange.”
Glancing down, I realized he was right. My exposed skin was visibly glowing faintly orange. I hadn’t noticed before because downtown San Diego had a lot of streetlights. For the first time since leaving Pudgy’s alley, I stood in deep shadow. You couldn’t miss my glow.
I lied, “It must be your concussion.”
“And you’re smoking too.”
Sure enough, my clothes were smoldering. I lied again, “It’s your concussion. Probably screwing with your vision.”
“You think so?”
“Definitely,” I lied. I didn’t want this guy remembering me as the glowing orange guy. I was willing to wager I was the only one on the planet. Time to go. “Catch you later.”
I slapped the roof of his car and walked into the night before he could say anything else.
A block away, I stopped and watched Pudgy from where I stood hidden behind a well-illuminated corner of a nearby building —so no one else would notice my glow.
From inside the fire station, someone opened the door and let Pudgy inside.
That done, I headed back toward my own car.
On the way, I stuck to the streetlights. I also checked myself for bullets. Relief. The remaining five were still there, including the one on my neck. I peeled them off while I walked. The metal was soft from my excess heat, the consistency of wet clay. I smushed them into a warm wad and pocketed them. They were no longer recognizable as bullets, but I didn’t want any evidence left at the scene. Self defense or not, I had killed someone.
With all eight slugs and eight shell casings in my pockets, there wouldn’t be any physical evidence of gunfire.
And there wouldn’t be a body.
Or so I hoped.
I had no idea what would happen to the pieces of Ice Statue’s body when they thawed. If I remembered correctly, none were large enough to be recognizable as human. Hopefully, my nuclear freeze (if that was what it was) had destroyed his DNA beyond recognition, and every other conceivable biological marker that might identify him. And hopefully, there wasn’t a final remaining recognizable chunk — like Ice Statue’s crystalline face, for example — sitting under the dumpster, just waiting for someone to come along and find it.
