Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air

by Jackson Ford

  “Bakersfield might do,” says the cameraman. “Town got hit pretty bad, but the roads are still good, s’far as I know.”

  A map pops into Amber’s head. Bakersfield… almost a hundred miles away, but if they could get there…

  “What’s your name?” Zuckerman asks.

  For a long moment, Amber doesn’t know what to say.

  Does she tell her they’re Amber and Matthew? Does she give their real names? No – it’s way too risky.

  “Denise,” she says, pulling the name of another doctor at the Facility. “This is… this is Mike. Mikey.”

  Zuckerman’s smile is back. “Pleased to meet you, Denise and Mikey. Bakersfield it is. But only if you answer all my questions.”

  “Mol, We’re not a goddamn taxi service,” the pilot says.

  The reporter ignores him. “OK – Denise. What did you see? Tell me everything.”

  “No.” Amber points. “We need to get out of here. We’ll talk in the chopper.”

  Zuckerman almost growls in frustration, but glances at the cameraman. “Is that going to be OK? For sound?”

  Miguel puffs out his cheeks. “Should be. Only got the one aviation adaptor, but I can lav up a headset. It’ll be distorted but—”

  “Good enough.” Zuckerman points to the chopper. “Let’s go.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Teagan

  A medical tent in a disaster relief camp is a shitty place to grieve. And it’s definitely a shitty place to plan your next move.

  It’s noisy. Crowded. Stinks to high heaven: mud and sweat and, weirdly, the citrusy tang of orange juice. Like someone hung up a cheap air freshener. We have to crowd in close around Reggie’s hospital bed, which is shoved up against a corner of the tent, the bed frame pushing against the thick, off-white fabric.

  Africa is crouched down next to Annie, who has her back against the wall of the medical tent. She hasn’t said a word yet – she’s just sitting there, head on her arms, like she’s sleeping. Africa’s been trying to talk to her, but clearly it isn’t going too well. The tent is loud, the air filled with shouts and groans and barked commands, which is making the argument I’m having with Reggie even more difficult than it is already.

  “We can’t,” I tell her.

  “We don’t have a choice.”

  “Of course we have a fucking choice.”

  “What do you think is going to happen if you go after him right now?” Reggie’s brown skin is almost grey, and the crow’s feet around her eyes are even deeper than usual. “That’s not smart, Teagan.”

  “Yeah, because what’s smart is all of us staying here and trying to convince these people –” I wave behind me at the chaotic mess of patients, soldiers and doctors “– to let us get on the horn to Washington. Hey, hi, we’re a secret government agency – no for real – and we need to jump on one of your satellite phones and call up our commander in the Pentagon so she can tell us what to do about the kid who can cause earthquakes.”

  “Will you keep your voice down?” I’ve never seen Reggie look this frustrated, this angry that she can’t just climb out of her bed.

  “I don’t even see why we’re talking about this. I’m going back out there, I’m gonna find that boy and I’m gonna—”

  “What, Teagan? What are you going to d—?” Reggie coughs, her weakened lungs protesting.

  “I’m gonna stop him. Obviously. Africa, back me up here.”

  At my question, he slowly turns his head to look at me. His face is gaunt.

  “Back me up,” I say. But it’s getting harder and harder to put any energy into my words. Like trying to sing a high note when your vocal chords are shredded.

  Africa gives a helpless shrug. “I suppose.”

  “Come on, dude. You can do better than that.”

  He says nothing. Just turns back to Annie.

  “You aren’t—” Reggie coughs again. “You aren’t thinking strai—” The coughing intensifies, her shoulders hitching as she hacks. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  I have never heard Reggie swear, and I have definitely never heard her take God’s name in vain. Not that I’m about to bring her up on it. He hasn’t exactly been doing a bang-up job lately.

  It’s starting to dawn on me that Paul is really gone. It feels like a hangover – like that horrible period where you’re still half-asleep but you know something isn’t right and you can feel it building, pushing up against your closed eyelids and clogging your sinuses and sucking all the moisture from your mouth.

  I have a sudden urge to sit down, just sit and never get up again. Instead, I take a deep breath. “If we aren’t going after this kid, then what the hell are we gonna do?”

  “I didn’t say we weren’t going after him.” Reggie lets her head fall back against the thin pillow. “I just want us to process everything first.”

  “What? Like Paul?”

  She closes her eyes, and it strikes me then just how much effort this is taking out of her. It’s using every ounce of strength she has.

  “We’ll mourn Paul later,” she says. “I’m talking about the boy. We need to develop a way to contain him. From where I am, it appears he’s like you, Teagan.”

  “He’s nothing like me.”

  Annoyance slides into Reggie’s voice. “You know what I mean, and don’t try to pretend otherwise. Your psychokinesis affects inorganic objects only, whereas he clearly has the ability to move organic molecules. Carbon, hydrogen. Do you think he can affect all organic objects? Trees and leaves and such?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t stick around long enough to fill out the questionnaire.”

  “All right,” she snaps. “No point focusing on the unknowns. We know for sure he can manipulate the earth – use it as a weapon. My guess is that for the most part, he’s got limits, just as you do.”

  I gesture to the chaotic medical tent, with its doctors and soldiers and patients swirling around us – every one of them wet from the steady rain, muddy and exhausted. “You sure about that?”

  “Yeah, OK… but I think he can only cause an earthquake in certain circumstances, like when he’s above a fault line. That’s what happened with the first quake, on the gas station camera.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I’m not. But the epicentre on the last quake was right above the San Andreas fault. Why go to all that trouble, if you can cause a quake anywhere?” She stares into the middle distance for a moment, thinking hard. “And he’s only a child. Do you think there’s a chance he doesn’t know what he’s doing? Maybe he reacts this way when he’s scared – he might not even have meant to cause the earthquake.”

  I get a picture of the kid’s face again. Right before he… Right before Paul. The weird, almost smug little smile. Like he’d won a prize.

  “He knows exactly what he’s doing.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “… I just am.”

  Now that I’ve pictured the kid’s face – the evil, twisted little boy grin – I can’t get it out of my head. The thoughts tumble, cascade, pile on top of one another. I didn’t get a chance to think much about where the kid came from before – I knew he had to have been created after everything went to shit in Wyoming, but I never gave a thought as to who might have done it. With my whole family gone, nobody was able to recreate my ability in another person. And God knows, the government tried.

  Except… what if they succeeded? What if, at some point during my captivity, they actually ended up creating another person with abilities? It’s not like they had any incentive to keep me in the loop – I was an asset to them, a piece of government property. Still am, kind of.

  Problem with that is they kept getting more and more frustrated, urging me to push myself harder, go past my limits. Why do that, if they’d succeeded? Why keep up the act? For my benefit? Fuck no. They didn’t care what I thought. Whatever happened during my captivity in that windblown little facility in Waco, it didn’t result in a superpowered kid.
>
  Which doesn’t change the fact that there’s one of them out there, wandering around, with the ability to bury people alive.

  A cold chill, shivering across my scalp. Did Tanner do this, somehow? Did she know? And if she did, if the kid really is one of hers, then what in the hell is she doing unleashing him on Los Angeles?

  When I voice these thoughts to Reggie, her expression hardens. “Moira would never do that.”

  “Are you sure, though?”

  “Something like this… it’s too big. The child would be in a facility, same as you were.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t know. Someone else in the government might be—”

  “Oh, she’d know.”

  “She didn’t know about Jake.” I think back to when I first understood that Tanner had completely missed the fact of Jake’s existence, after the whole mess had blown over. The idea that there were things she didn’t know was intoxicating. Who’s to say that she knew about this?

  Reggie, apparently. “If this boy was made by our own government, Moira would be in the loop. She may have missed Jake… but it looks like everybody missed Jake. A government-made person with abilities would light up her radar screen like fireworks on the fourth of July. Wherever this boy came from, it wasn’t us.”

  “Then where—?”

  “We can worry about that later. Right now? We need to focus on how he can be contained.”

  Interesting choice of words. She’s right, though. I’ve killed exactly one person before today, and he was trying to kill me, and he was also a grown-up, potty-trained adult with his own fully formed dreams and desires. I don’t care if this kid is the Antichrist: I am not killing him.

  “I know you want to charge out there,” Reggie is saying.

  “Reggie, I swear, if you’re about to tell me that I have to slow down and think—”

  “But I am going to tell you that. It’s been, what, forty-five minutes since Paul? The kid is long gone by now. We don’t know where he’s going, what he wants, if he even wants anything. Let’s at least have some kind of plan for next time.”

  “What about the airport?” Africa says. “We put him on the runway, huh? No dirt. No ground for him to use.” He says ground like the word tastes foul in his mouth.

  “Yeah, we gotta get him there first,” I mutter.

  “It’s an idea,” Reggie says. “But I don’t think it’ll work. We don’t know his range, or how strong he is. He might be able to just pull earth right through the tarmac.”

  “Hey Teggan – what happen when you go to the forest?” Africa waves his hand above his head. “When there’s no other stuff.”

  The forest. What he’s asking is, what happens when I’m surrounded by organic objects and nothing else. What happens is that I feel all squirmy and weird, like I’m uncomfortable in my own skin.

  “I can’t move anything,” I tell him. “But it doesn’t get rid of my ability. And you’d have to keep me in the forest to stop me whacking you round the head.”

  “Could we get him on a plane, then?” Africa asks. “Keep him off the ground?”

  “Maybe,” says Reggie. “But there must be an easier way. I feel like we don’t know enough.” She thinks for a moment. “Tell me about the woman. The one who was with him – we saw on her the tape too, I think. His mother?”

  It’s crazy that we’re having this conversation – this rational, considered, mostly calm conversation, when Paul’s body is in a shallow grave not half a mile away. I exhale, trying to control my frustration. “She was kind of ahead of where he was. Most of the time, she had her back to me.”

  “What was she like?”

  “You saw on the video. She’s young.”

  “I know that. What else? You saw her in person.”

  “Kind of hard to say. I didn’t get a good look. And Annie was with me. Paul would have—”

  I stop, the words cutting off cold. That same feeling again: a hangover, building and building.

  “The boy then.” Reggie’s voice is stiff. “Tell me about him.”

  “He was… Well, he was a kid. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “How old?”

  “Again, you saw the video. Four, maybe five. Were are we going with this?”

  “And clothing? What was he wearing?”

  I shake my head. Reggie just stares at me, refusing to look away.

  “Shoes. Pants. A shirt. A T-shirt, I mean, not like a dress shirt. It was—”

  Wait a second.

  Reggie and Africa must see the expression on my face. “What?” Africa says.

  “Quiet.” I close my eyes, trying to remember. I make myself see the kid again: that awful smile, the brown hair with the lame-ass little boy cut, the letters on the shirt…

  I smile. “California Earthquake Exhibit.”

  “What’s that?” Africa says.

  “It’s… it’s an earthquake exhibit in California. I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “But where?” He’s on his feet now. “Here in Los Angeles?”

  “His T-shirt said that?” asks Reggie. “Teagan, are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure. No, definitely sure.”

  “This is good,” she says, almost to herself. “We don’t know where he and his mother are going, or what they want. But we do know where they’ve been. And I know where that exhibit is, I’ve seen it advertised. The Meitzen Museum, next to USC. That’s not far from here.”

  “By car, sure,” I tell her. “And we know how that’s gonna go.”

  “Even on foot, it’s probably no more than an hour away. Two, tops.”

  “He could have gotten that shirt anywhere.”

  “If you have a better idea, honey, I’m waiting to hear it. And do not say you’re going to go back out there and go hunting for him.”

  “Wasn’t gonna,” I mutter.

  “It makes sense that he went to that exhibit. If he’s only just discovered this power, or didn’t know he could cause quakes, then he might want to find out more. Maybe someone at the museum saw him, talked to him.”

  “How do you know the building’s even still there? The quake might have—”

  “We don’t. But one of the few things we do know, or at least have a good reason to believe, is that he went there recently. It might give us some insight into what he’s planning – if he and his mother actually have a plan.”

  She looks at each of us. “We’re in uncharted territory here. Moira Tanner can’t help – at least, not until I convince one of these yahoos to lend us a sat-phone. We have to help ourselves, and the way we do that is by chasing up every lead, no matter how small. Go to the museum, talk to anybody who’s still there. See if they remember the boy at all – you should be able to describe him.”

  “Reggie, this is… insane. We’re going to waste hours on this, and we don’t even know if there’ll be anyone there. They might have been evacuated already.”

  “It’s not a waste. It’s a lead. And we won’t be idle while you’re gone. I’m going to do whatever I can to get a line of communication to Washington.”

  “And if it does turn out the museum is a bust?”

  “Then come straight back here. We’ll figure out something else.”

  I roll my eyes. “Fine.” It’s not fine, nothing in the past day has been even close to fine, but… Reggie’s right. Maybe someone at the museum did see him…

  “If we run into him again.” Africa looks between Reggie and me. “The boy. What do we do?”

  “We’re not gonna run into him on the way to the damn museum,” I tell him. “That’s south of here. He was going north.”

  “What if we go back? Maybe he—”

  Annie says, “We’re gonna kill him.”

  They’re the first words she’s spoken since we got back to the stadium. They’re said calmly, clearly, with zero hint of emotion. She’s raised her head, looking up at us through dry, red-rimmed eyes.

  “Annie…” Reggie says.

  “We’r
e gonna take his fucking life.” Spoken in the same dead tone. I’ve never seen Annie like this. Annie shouts and rages and gets angry. She doesn’t get quiet. She doesn’t have a look in her eyes like the one she has now.

  I open my mouth to say that no, we aren’t going to kill a kid. But I can’t do it. The words won’t form. How am I supposed to tell Annie, who just saw the man she loved buried alive, not to want payback? It’s all very well to say he’s a child, he didn’t know what he was doing, we can’t treat him like an adult. But right now, Annie doesn’t see him as a kid. She doesn’t even see him as human.

  “Go,” Reggie says to me and Africa. “You can head straight down South Figueroa. It’ll take you right to the museum.”

  Africa looks sick, but nods.

  “I’m coming.” Annie tries to get to her feet, wobbling a little.

  “Nope,” Reggie says. “You’re going to stay right here.”

  “The hell I am.”

  “You are not,” Reggie says, emphasising each word, “ready to go back out there. You’re in shock.”

  “I’m fine,” Annie’s on her feet now, but swaying, like a drunk. She reminds me of a driver trying to convince a cop that she’s totally sober.

  “Annabeth Ramona Cruz, you’re going to stay right here. Understand?”

  Annie gestures to us. “They can’t do it. They don’t know… don’t know how…” She blinks, as if she forgot what she was trying to say.

  “They’ll come straight back.” Reggie flicks her eyes towards the door, gesturing at us to leave. “Now I need you to get me some water. Can you do that?”

  Annie nods and stumbles away, and once she’s out of earshot Reggie says to us, “Under my pillow. There’re some sandwiches. A bottle of water too, I think.”

  “But you just told Annie… Also, why are there sandwiches under your pillow? Is that code for something.”

  “They brought some food round earlier. I didn’t feel like eating, and I had a feeling we’d need to ration. Both of you eat, get some water, use the bathroom, do whatever you got to do. Then get back out there. Paul might be gone, but China Shop isn’t. Let’s get moving.”