by Jackson Ford
I turn, and step into the storm.
Face the flood.
It’s much closer now. Huge chunks of concrete tumble end over end, carried by the sheer force of the water. The cars in the torrent spin, almost lazily. The bamboo stalks bounce and crash, moving in and out of the sick-looking foam.
Here we go.
It’s a thought that’s supposed to give me confidence, and it doesn’t work.
I wipe rain out of my eyes, blinking hard. Then I reach into my pocket, and pull out the meth.
Such a small thing. A little plastic pouch, filled with crystalline white powder.
I shouldn’t have this. I told myself I took it so I could experiment – so I could figure out if there was a way I could use it safely.
What a crock of shit. That little story I told myself was just that: a story. I got high on meth, and I wanted more, and I had a chance and I took it. That’s all.
Maybe – just maybe – I could have gotten past the addiction. Not going to happen now. I can’t microdose here, not with the flood bearing down on me. The only way I’m going to stop it, the only way I save the people still in the homeless camp, is by getting a good-size hit into my system.
As I look down at the baggie, the want swells up inside me. The need. The awful feeling that I’m holding the only key to true happiness in my hands.
I’m not an idiot. I know what happens to meth addicts. I know how bad it can get. And those thoughts make me recoil, because there is no way – no way in hell, not ever – that I’m letting myself become one of those people. I’ll cold turkey this motherfucker, check into rehab, do whatever I have to—
Except: if I don’t take this meth, right now, people are going to die.
Not me. I can fly the fuck out of here. Grab my little pallet with its handy metal bracers, and magic carpet my ass up onto the freeway. Watch the flood sweep by underneath me. Then go and find the woman who took Reggie, and beat the shit out of her.
And then never be able to look at myself in the mirror again.
I laugh. It’s a desperate, pathetic sound. My whole big speech to Nic about making adult decisions, doing the right thing, and it turns out that doing the right thing in this case involves taking a shit-ton of hard drugs.
There’s gotta be another way. Something you haven’t thought of.
There isn’t.
And I am out of time.
The baggie is your basic Ziploc. I pop the seal, letting out a tiny puff of white powder. I’ll have to snort it, properly this time. How long will it take to kick in? If the flood gets here before it does…
I cup my palm, and tip some powder into it. It looks like heaped, white sea salt.
Having this shit, this salt-looking drug, in the palm of my hand is like a mirror image of the life I wanted. As if somewhere, an alternate-universe me is in a kitchen somewhere, holding a small pile of sea salt. That version of me turned her back on China Shop, decided to be happy and live her life on her own terms. She made it work.
I wish I was her. Instead of the Teagan who acted like an adult, and is now facing down a raging flood using a bag of meth as a weapon.
I stick my face in the pile of meth, and take a quick, hard sniff.
It’s like somebody letting off a firecracker in the middle of my head. A piercing, burning, jagged pain explodes across my face. I jerk back, yelping, blinking back acid tears. The rest of the meth in my palm scatters into the air, and I almost drop the whole bag.
I make a sound that is halfway between ugh and argh. Hell, my entire face feels halfway between ugh and argh. I shake my head, snorting, like a horse shooing away a fly. God fucking dammit. Wow, I am not doing that again.
I take a deep breath, hoping that maybe I’ve been sucked into that parallel universe where I’m a famous chef and not trying to stop a flash flood in a storm drain. No such luck. The water is closer now, a boiling mess of froth and debris.
I’m still terrified, still exhausted… but the burning in my sinuses acts a little like a slap in the face to a drunk, clearing things up for a minute. I stuff the rest of the drugs back in my jacket, hating myself for doing it, but knowing I might need them.
I send out my PK in a wide arc, looking for any phones pointed in my direction. I can’t find any, and the phones that I do find get a quick crunch on the internals. When the meth kicks in, I’ll have to do a wider sweep, just like I did when I fought off the Legends. I’m under the cover of the freeway, out of sight, so I shouldn’t have to worry about being spotted – although there are probably a few people still in the camp who are going to get one hell of a shock.
I have to be ready. I flex my fingers, focusing on my PK. I think it’s stronger, but if so, it’s not by much.
“Come on,” I whisper. “Hit me.”
It doesn’t. The flood keeps coming, and my PK stays very much as it always has been. The front edge of the flood is a rolling nightmare, and the concrete underneath my feet is starting to vibrate.
“Any minute now…”
Shit, what if I didn’t take enough? I’ll have to do another dose, and even then it might not kick in before the flood gets here.
I would give anything right now to reverse time. Fuck my conscience, fuck anybody stupid enough to still be in the storm drain with the flood coming down on them. If I could turn back the clock, I’d throw that fucking bag of meth as far as I could and get the hell out of here. I wouldn’t let this poison anywhere near me. But I did, and it’s inside me now, and I put it there. This is one little doodle that can’t be undid.
I need another hit. I paw at my jacket pocket, hating that I have to do this, knowing that there’s no choice. I’ll have to hope that there’s time for—
Oh.
Oh, shiiiiiiiiiiii
FIFTY-ONE
Teagan
I exhale.
It takes a thousand years.
My PK range doubles. Triples. Quadruples. Goes further than it’s ever been. I’m at the centre of a sphere of burning, clean, white light. A light that burns away fear, my doubt, everything. A light that leaves nothing behind but stillness.
The air tastes of damp wood, burning trash, the sour tang of urine. Bad smells all – but strangely, they don’t bother me. I note them, acknowledge them, let them be.
I can move anything with my PK. Anything. Organic, inorganic, it doesn’t matter. Right now, in this moment, I’m stronger than I’ve ever been.
I take a few hundred years to appreciate the sensation. Letting it wash over me. There’s no pain any more. No hollow stomach. How could I have wanted to take this back? I can’t even remember what I was scared of. It’s miraculous.
Slowly, oh so slowly, I turn my eyes to the flood.
Three hundred feet away now. Maybe thirty seconds from impact. Carrying so much debris that the water itself is boiling up the sides of the channel, tendrils of raging white froth reaching out for me.
I smile. It’s lazy, easy-going, like I’m strolling through the park and have come across a piece of litter on the ground, one that I can pick up and dispose of without a second thought.
Park. Wasn’t Reggie in a park? Wasn’t that where Annie and Nic went? Wasn’t Reggie in some kind of trouble?
It doesn’t matter. When I’m done here, I can go save her.
I roll my shoulders, take another gentle breath. Stare at the giant torrent coming to sweep me away. It’s two hundred feet away, closing fast.
A sound reaches my ears from behind me. That’s what it feels like – a noise that swims through the air, languid and easy, alighting on my ears with the softest touch. Engines. More specifically: motorcycle engines.
I look over my shoulder, and smile.
The Legends are here.
There are four of them, winding their bikes through the maze of scaffolding. There’s Robert, on one of the biggest bikes I’ve ever seen, a monster Harley Davidson with handlebars you could do pull-ups on. He’s with two goons I don’t know… and Pop.
She’s not riding a bi
ke. She’s riding a gigantic, four-wheeled ATV that looks like a runty monster truck, painted bright green. She is staring in absolute horror at the approaching flood, her mouth open.
A second later, she locks eyes with me.
I have a sudden urge to yell that I’m high on meth – and not just any meth. Her meth. Instead, I give her a little wave. I’m glad she’s here. I don’t need her, because I’m going to stop the flash flood all by myself, but she might come in handy later on. I don’t think she’s going to shoot me – not now, not when she actually sees what’s happening here. And if she does, so what? I’ll stop the bullet in mid-air.
I turn away, and Pop and the Legends fall from my thoughts.
Wait. What if there are people on the other side of the flood barriers? That’s where the water is going to go, after all. But a quick check with my PK shows nobody in range. There’s a section of freeway on the west side of the storm drain, which is wrecked enough that there no cars at all driving on it – none that I can sense. To the east is a section of vacant lots, plus a few destroyed homes. Nobody around. No one to get hurt.
It’s perfect.
I’m humming now. The opening bars of “The Next Episode”. Dre and Snoop, backing me up. And as I hum, I bring my PK inwards. Marshal the invisible energy in front of me. My ability – the weird, fucked-up thing that makes me different from everybody else, that I’m still nowhere close to understanding.
A hundred feet away. Ninety. It’s possible that I could stop the water now, even at this distance – the meth hit has made me that powerful. But I want strength, not range. I want to grab the entire flood – water, debris, all of it – and send it up and outwards. I want to look it right in the face before I send it on its way.
Fifty feet. Forty. Driving rain soaks my clothes, drenches the skin on my face. Thunder cracks the clouds above. I smile through it all.
A tiny grain of doubt. My PK may not work on water. I’ve never tried it before. But the water is thirty feet away now, and there is no time left to doubt myself.
I grab my PK, wrap it around the flood. Every tree branch, every bamboo stalk, every car, every piece of rubble, trash, concrete, wood, dirt.
And water. Every individual molecule of water, each atom of hydrogen and oxygen. A billion of them. No, a trillion. Uncountable. I wrap my PK around all of them—
And push.
FIFTY-TWO
Teagan
It’s like a wave breaking against a sea wall.
The flood explodes upwards, a torrent of water bursting into the air, tossing concrete rubble and destroyed cars into the sky like they’re made of packing foam. The water balloons upwards and outwards, cascading over the flood barriers. The noise is incredible: Krakatoa getting hit with a meteorite.
And I am not ready.
Even with the meth boosting my PK, I am just not prepared to grab a million tons of rushing water carrying half a million tons of debris, and stopping it in its tracks.
It’s like getting punched in the stomach by God. I grunt, ferocious tears squeezing out from my closed eyes. I actually slide backwards, my shoes scraping across the concrete, nearly toppling over. The water isn’t like other objects. It doesn’t have boundaries, or a shape. It’s everywhere, and keeping hold of it… I have to force each individual molecule to listen to me.
And of course, it’s not just the water. It’s everything in the water. A thousand objects, some big enough to give my PK trouble on a good day.
I lean in, like I’m walking into a strong wind. I’ve never concentrated this hard in my entire life. The focus is total. I channel everything I have towards the raging torrent. I’m not even sure I’m breathing. The world’s worst headache is back, growing at the base of my skull.
The rain actually bends around me. The drops flying away. I didn’t even realise I was controlling them.
The water and the debris crash down on the flood barriers. They crumple, collapsing under the onslaught. A chunk of concrete the size of a small car rips one of them in half. The sound of the flood buries the noise of tortured metal.
And I can’t get the water out of the storm drain fast enough. It just keeps coming, piling up. It gets higher and higher in front of me. Twenty feet. Twenty five. I grit my teeth and roll my shoulders and make it do what I want, putting everything I have into it.
You shall not pass, I think, the thought wild and uncontrolled.
Except: it’s too much. The sheer force of the flood is too much to contain. My PK was a wall before, grabbing the water at a specific point and not letting it past. But the water and debris at the edges are starting to find their way through, the flood creeping in on either side of me, rolling down the sloped side of the storm drain. Before I can blink, it soaks my ankles, climbing towards my knees.
“Not today, fucker.”
I dig deep, pulling in even more PK energy, refusing to acknowledge the screaming, horrifying headache rolling up from the back of my skull. I plug the gaps, forcing the water back. Holy shit, how big is this damn flood?
A car nearly crushes me. It must have gotten high enough to escape my PK. It comes rolling over the top: a mangled wreck that used to be a Prius. I yelp as it crunches into the concrete, jumping backwards, and for a half a second, I lose focus on my PK.
The flood explodes towards me. I snap my PK back on it, once again refusing to let it pass. It’s now ten feet from me, barely under control. Cold, dirty, spitting water hits my face, my eyes.
I don’t know if the camp behind me has cleared. I don’t dare look. I don’t know if anybody can see what I’m doing, or if anyone is filming on a cellphone I missed. There’s nothing I can do about it now. I don’t even know if my exit plan – grab the metal-and-wood pallet, and get the hell out – is going to work any more, or if I’ll have time to do it. All I can do is push the flood back.
And it keeps coming. Every time I think I’ve got a handle on the water, a fresh surge pushes me backwards. It can’t have been more than thirty seconds since the flood met my PK, but it feels like thirty years.
Even with the meth, I’m running out of gas. My arms are made of lead, the headache turning my vision grey. There’s a curious metallic taste on my lips.
Blood. That last one is blood. My nose… it’s gushing, and I don’t know if it’s from the meth I snorted, or the raw energy flowing through me.
As the flood inches closer, as more water slips through the cracks, I start to scream.
Not in pain, or terror. It’s a scream of rage: a furious, determined howl that comes from the very deepest part of me.
It builds and builds and builds, and with it comes another surge of PK, an explosion of it, the most energy I’ve sent out at once, ever. It hits the wall of water like an invisible fist, punching a hole in the flood, pushing it back.
But every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And this time, the opposite reaction is like nothing I’ve ever seen.
The concrete around me cracks, the fissures spiderwebbing out in a dozen directions. The cracks form a loose circle around me, leaving me standing on a small, whole section. And that section…
With a crunching, grinding sound, that section tears loose of the concrete around it. Lifting itself, and me, into the air.
I don’t even know how it’s happening. I could swear I’m not controlling it with my PK – it’s just flying, all by itself, like it’s defying gravity as a side effect. I waver, struggling to keep my balance, as I rise before the flood.
Dark lights flicker at the edge of my vision. I’m going to black out. I’m still screaming, and as my throat contracts in agony, the concrete slab I’m on tilts towards the flood, like I’m on a seesaw, the front dropping while the rear rises upwards. I have to bend my knees to stay upright. The surge of PK energy starts to fade.
Get out of here. Get above the water!
But I can’t. At any second, I’m going to lose my hold completely, and then I won’t even have solid ground to stand on.
Holy
fuck: my blood. Droplets of it float into view, hovering in the air in front of me.
I go to one knee on the concrete, driven there by the raw power. In desperation, I throw a hand out, like I can direct my energy, channel it. But it’s never worked in the past, and it sure as hell doesn’t work now. There’s a cascade of water bucketing down from above, more and more of it flooding the camp, and I am going to lose. I am going to be swept away.
I claw at my pocket for the meth, but it won’t work. By the time the extra dose kicks in, it’ll all be over. No matter what happens, I’m not going to have enough energy to make it out of here. I’m trapped.
The concrete beneath me starts to drop. Somehow, I am still screaming, but it’s no longer a human voice. It’s something raw and jagged, an animal sound, and I’ve got almost nothing left. There’s no extra surge of PK coming this time. I am about to drain the tank for good.
The flood rears over me like a striking tiger, held in place by the very last dregs of my PK. I close my eyes, and rise up off my knee, onto my feet.
In the last instant available to me, I’m expecting to see my friends. Annie. Nic. Africa. Reggie. They are what I want to hold onto. Instead, it’s my sister I see: riding ahead of me, through the woods, looking over her shoulder and laughing.
And I find, at the very end, that I want to hold onto that, too.
FIFTY-THREE
Reggie
As the lightning rains down, as the world fills with noise and thunder and searing light and drenching rain, Reggie does the only thing she can think of.
She reaches out, stretching as far as her body will allow. She forces herself to keep her eyes open as she wraps an arm around Leo, and pulls him in close.
He almost gets away from her. He’s squirming in shock and terror, little legs lashing out. But somehow, Reggie keeps hold of him. She grips him as tight as she can, his back against her side, the lower half of her face nestled in his hair.
“It’s all right,” she whispers. Leo’s screams drown out her words. She has lost track of Annie and Nic, can’t see her captor. All she can do is hold the boy close, whisper calming words to him.
