by Jackson Ford
She breaks off, wrapping me in another bear hug. “You’re OK,” she says, like she’s trying to reassure herself. “You’re OK.”
I am.
I’m alive.
It is half past three on a chilly, damp June day in the great state of Washington and ladies and gentlemen, Teagan Frost is alive.
Also dirty, stinking and mightily pissed off.
I winkle my way out of Annie’s bonecrusher grip, resting my forehead on hers. “Didn’t know you cared.”
She makes a noise that might be a laugh.
I’m only half-joking though. She and I have had such an insane relationship. We’ve argued, fought, said horrible things to each other. I have literally thrown her off a building. We’d finally reached a kind of stalemate, but if I had to pick which option she’d choose between killing Matthew – the little shit who took Paul’s life – and saving me…
Annie was so laser-focused on taking out the kid. For her to choose me must have taken everything she had.
And I would’ve done the same for her. In a second.
I don’t think I realised that until right now.
I reach down to shift the car door, still bumping up against my leg, and find it’s not a door. It’s an assault rifle. Annie must have brought it, and seeing it brings everything rushing back. Well, that, and the absolutely insane sounds coming from over our heads.
“Come on,” I say, getting unsteadily to my feet. “World isn’t gonna save itself.”
We poke our heads over the rim of the crater, and my mouth falls open.
You know World War One movies? Dudes running through no man’s land in the middle of a battle, with the drifting dirt and exploding mortars and total chaos? This is what it must have been like. The ground looks as if it’s been shelled – huge craters, exposed roots, bouncing chunks of rock and soil. The car Matthew and his mom arrived in is almost unrecognisable. The camp building has been torn to pieces. Exposed beams, splintered walls, windows ringed with jagged shards of glass.
And off to one side of the wrecked building, maybe fifty yards away, where the woodshed used to be…
I’m seeing things. I was looking for a little boy, but he isn’t there. In his place is a giant dirt monster. A huge, shifting blob of earth and rocks and soil, maybe ten feet high. A blob that hurls boulders in all directions, surrounded by tentacles of dirt that move like liquid.
The air around us is a mess of hurtling rocks and clods of soil, bouncing off each other. From where I am, I can see through to Burr. He’s taken cover behind one of the few still-standing sections of building wall, popping up to fire at the dirt blob. There’s a second where I don’t understand what Matthew is doing – the dirt can’t stop gunfire, surely? Then again, a whirling storm of soil and rock is probably going to deflect a bullet, and it’ll make it impossible to get a clear shot.
Burr has to duck as a dirt tentacle slashes at his head, spattering against a pillar. The only reason Matthew hasn’t buried him yet is because he’s standing on floorboards, although I wouldn’t put it past the kid to just collapse the house from underneath. The noise is like nothing I’ve ever heard before.
The sight of Burr clears my mind, helps make sense of what I’m seeing. It’s not a dirt monster – it’s Matthew, shielding himself from gunfire behind a shifting wall of earth. He’s being hit on all sides – the snipers are firing from the forest, big booms cutting through the noise. Someone else – Garcia? – hunkers down behind the car, rifle in hand.
Annie pulls me back down right before a rock the size of a basketball brains me. It punches into the rim of the crater, a foot from my head, sending up a choking shower of dirt.
“Hey, Teagan?” Annie sounds like she’s gotten a little bit of her mojo back. “You still wanna try talking this kid out of it?”
“I think we’re past that point, don’t you?”
She picks up the rifle, glances down at it, as if reminding herself how it works. “We keep hitting him. He’s gotta give us an opening sooner or—”
“Better idea.” Annie isn’t the only one getting her mojo back. I thought I’d be out of gas by now. But I guess I had a third wind stashed behind the second one; my brain is so stoked to be alive that it’s given me a ginormous shot of adrenaline. I can’t do any real damage with the soil – I could hardly move it enough to give me an air hole. But I’ve still got my regular PK, and right now it’s got a tenuous grip on the objects around me. Two bent and twisted car doors, and six metal roofing sheets, half-buried in the earth.
I get hold of one of the doors, flip it upright with my mind. “Magic carpet ride,” I murmur.
“What?”
“We’ll never be able to shoot our way through.” I clamber onto the door, down on one knee, gripping the edges. “I’ll distract him. Get you guys a clear shot.”
“That’s—”
“Get to Burr. Tell him the freak show’s got a plan.”
“Teagan – wait, Teagan!”
Putting all my energy into it, I lift the car door upwards – just like I did at Van Nuys Airport to get Paul and me onto the hangar roof. This one’s for you, Jasmine.
“That’s not a plan!” Annie yells at me.
But I’m already in the air.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Teagan
I don’t get to look cool very often.
I don’t have a sweet superhero costume. No catchphrase, or theme song. If I don’t get coffee in the morning, I can barely form coherent sentences.
But rising up out of the earth like an avenging angel, back from the dead, with seven huge pieces of metal whirling into formation behind me?
If I do say so myself, that is fucking cool.
Of course, it turns out flying into what amounts to a giant sandstorm makes you cough and choke and splutter, and kind of ruins the image. It’s hard to look cool when you have to hold your arm over your mouth and nose, eyes streaming.
I have no idea how long my little dose of good-to-be-alive adrenaline is going to last, so I’d better make this count. I squint against the dust, using my PK to keep my platform balanced underneath me.
Twenty feet up, I get an aerial view of the battlefield. It doesn’t look any prettier from up here: a pockmarked, crater-filled hellscape. Burr, down at my eleven o’clock, crouched behind a wall. Okoro, at my three. And – yep, Garcia, sprinting over to Burr in a roadie run, only just avoiding a huge, falling pillar of dirt.
And of course: Matthew. A tiny figure surrounded by giant walls of earth, just visible through the dust. He’s turned away from me – I can’t see his face, but from his clenched fists, I’d say he’s good and angry.
“And here we go,” I murmur. Annie was wrong – I do have a plan. I probably should’ve explained it better before I left her, but it’ll totally work.
I focus my PK, hold on tight and head for Matthew. Twenty feet off the ground, trailing a spinning propeller of metal.
Right then, another figure pops into my field of view. Matthew’s mom: running out of the forest, head down… holding a gun. Where the fuck did she get that? And what the hell is she planning to do, sneak up on Burr? She’s going to get herself killed. Burr’s an asshole but he’s an asshole with special forces training, and I’m guessing he’s not in a forgiving mood right now.
“How about nope?” I yell, sending the biggest metal sheet I’ve got whirling through the air towards her.
I slow it down at the last second, tilt it back. Instead of hitting her square-on, it scoops her up, like a wave lifting an unaware swimmer. I’m careful to take her weight, not just throw her, lifting her a good fifteen feet through the air and dumping her onto the ground on the other side of the wrecked camp building. She’ll be bruised to hell, maybe a few broken ribs, but that’s a lot better than a bullet to the face. Or a boulder – somehow, I don’t think her son gives much of a shit who he’s aiming at right now.
Speaking of her son…
He hasn’t seen me yet, which is good. Annie’s
wrong about getting an opening sooner or later – we’re not going to kill this kid using luck. But if I can get all his attention, then maybe somebody gets a shot.
And after all: if you’re going after someone who can bury you alive, it makes sense to attack from the air.
I rocket towards Matthew, still down on one knee, holding onto my wobbly platform for dear life. A wave of fatigue washes over me, and I have to grit my teeth to force it back. Dodging death might have gotten me an adrenaline boost, but it’s not going to last long. Make this count.
And as if he senses I’m close, Matthew whirls round. Stares right at me.
Some kids have tempter tantrums. Others completely and totally lose their shit. Matthew is way past that. I don’t think I’ve seen an uglier expression on anybody, adult or child, in my whole life.
But as his piggy little eyes settle on me, something else crosses his face.
Surprise.
For a second, his attacks on Burr and the others stop. A dirt tentacle dissolves, dropping to ground with a huge whump. A rock, freed of Matthew’s mental control, impacts one of the shattered building walls.
“Up here, dickhead!” I yell.
Not exactly my strongest opening – especially since he’s already noticed me. I make up for it by sending two metal sheets whizzing through the air towards him.
Give him this: he reacts fast. Two pillars of dirt erupt from in front of him and bat the sheets aside. I have to focus hard to keep hold of the metal, bring them back under control. I move sideways, circling him twenty feet off the deck, doing everything I can to keep his attention.
No point trying to control the earth myself. Just because you’ve figured out you’re good at shooting three-pointers does not mean you’re ready for the NBA. I’ll stick to what I know here.
My platform, the car door, dips a little. It nearly topples me right off. I bring it back, willing it to stay in place. But I’m losing energy fast, much quicker than I should be.
“Yeah, come on!” I yell at him. At this point, I’m not exactly thinking too hard about what I’m saying, as long as it keeps his attention on me. “Do you know how goddamn long that paella took? My plan for Nic was totally working and you ruined it and you don’t even know what I’m talking about because you weren’t there, so how about you stop before I completely lose my shit? Huh? How about it?”
He howls – a little boy howl, nearly a scream. Two rocks, each one the size of a microwave, explode out of the ground. They fly through the air like they weigh no more than softballs, both aimed straight at me.
I swing two metal sheets around to my front just in time, blocking the rocks. There’s a thudding bang as they hit. The mental feedback as I take the impacts nearly makes me black out – I don’t actually know how I stay upright. No sooner do I deal with the rocks than a lance of twisting dirt snakes towards me. Then a second. I dodge around them both, slicing them in half with two more metal sheets. One of them reforms – literally just comes together again, undamaged – and whips at my head. I only just manage another dodge.
And all the while I’m circling, circling. I don’t know a lot about kids, but I do know this: it’s hard for them to pay attention to more than one thing at a time. I don’t care how smart they are. If I can just keep him focused on me…
Hey, Teagan, do anything fun on your trip to Washington? Oh, you know, just fought a giant dirt monster while riding a hoverboard. Nothing special.
From where I am right now, I can’t see any of the others – no Burr, no Annie, no nobody.
At that moment, Matthew attacks with everything he has. He’s fast – scary fast. Rocks, big and small, hurtle through the air towards me. Three dirt tentacles, right on their heels. I drop, stomach lurching as my platform moves downwards, only just avoiding getting brained. It takes every ounce of control I have to block the rest, swinging my metal sheets around in front of me and over my head. I’ve only got four left, three sheets and the car door – I lost track of the others at some point, missed them in the chaos.
Christ on a bicycle, isn’t this kid tired yet? Or is he like me, running on adrenaline?
I’m almost hyperventilating, exhaustion pulling at me. It slows my reactions, winkles soft fingers into my grip on the metal sheets. I force it back, dodging and ducking and weaving in and out of the trees.
That turns out to a mega-shitty idea, because the next thing Matthew does is collapse a tree on top of me.
There’s an enormous, crunching, ripping sound, and then the tree next to me fills my vision. I spin sideways, out of control now. Branches scrape my at my arm, leaves whipping at my face. I only just manage to not get crushed, but the tree takes out two of my metal sheets, burying them as it collapses to the forest floor.
And still no sign of Annie. She was right – this isn’t a plan, this is suicide. I am very quickly running out of juice, and it feels like I’m trying to fight the entire planet. For the second time today, death – the real deal, good night, game over – claws at my mind.
But this time…
This time, I smile back. The adrenaline and the exhaustion and the sheer insanity of what I’m doing all come together, ripping an cackling laugh from me, even as I try to stay afloat.
I grab hold of my car door with both hands, launch it forward. Just as the kid launches another dirt tentacle at me, I duck under it and throw myself right at him, screaming out of the sky like a meteor.
For a second, there’s nothing between us. No flying rocks, no pillars of dirt. Just him and me, separated by thirty feet of air.
He reacts quickly, sending a wave of dirt that looks like the one that he threw at the camp building, after Okoro missed. I turn upwards, flying over it, letting it crash to the ground beneath me.
And right then, I see Annie.
Annie and Burr.
They’re both sprinting as fast as they can across the broken ground, hunting for a gap in Matthew’s shield. I want to yell at them that it’s too soon, they’re never going to get past it—
Except they are. The spinning cylinder of soil and rock that Matthew has surrounded himself with is getting patchy. It’s much less solid than before. Even now Burr has his gun up, as if hunting for a clear shot. As long as I keep Matthew focused on me, he might just get it.
Of course, I may actually die before that happens. Matthew won’t even have to kill me. I’ll just drop dead from exhaustion.
“Come on!” I roar at Matthew, dodging yet another rock. “You want a piece of this? I’ve taken shits bigger than you, you little brat!”
It’s working. He gives one of those little-boy-howls, sending another wave of soil lurching towards me.
Behind him, Annie gets a clear shot.
I actually see it happen. The gap appearing in the wall, right in front of her. She drops to one knee, raises her rifle, takes aim.
And Matthew…
I don’t know whether he hears something, or just senses it. But he spins round, eyes wide in surprise. Before Annie can take the shot, he closes the gap, shielding himself with another wall of earth that appears as if from nowhere.
Burr yells something inaudible, and both he and Annie open up. Yellow muzzle flash spits from their guns as they fire in controlled bursts. I don’t know if they’ve seen a gap I’ve missed, or if they’re trying to create one through sheer volume of fire, and I don’t care.
I dive back in, one metal sheet left – I don’t even know where the others have gone. I hurl it at Matthew’s head, spinning it through the air. He knocks it aside, and I bring it right back, refusing to give, dodging left and right because through some goddamn miracle I am still riding the car door. We hit the kid on two fronts, forcing him to focus on the wall and on me.
He drops to his knees, face still twisted in that horrible grimace. It’s working. It’s working! Any second now, he’s going to make a mistake. He’ll let a gap open up in the wall, or my lone remaining metal sheet is going to get past his defences.
Through the
flying dirt, his eyes meet mine.
What I see in them isn’t defeat. It’s not even anger. It’s triumph. It’s the look of a kid who just had a really cool idea.
And before I can blink, the dirt around us just… vaporises.
Every chunk of soil, every tentacle, every part of Matthew’s wall. It fragments into tiny particles, becoming a huge, billowing cloud of choking dust. Matthew vanishes. Annie and Burr vanish. I can’t see a goddamn thing.
Because of course, Matthew is smart. He might just be a kid, but he’s way smarter than normal.
What do you do if you’re going to lose a fight? You make it impossible for your attackers to find you.
I don’t have time to appreciate the tactical genius, because right then, I lose my balance on my little hoverboard. Coughing, choking, eyes squeezed shut against the stinging dust—
I fall.
FIFTY-NINE
Matthew
They think they’re smarter than him.
That’s what really makes him mad. They thought he was just going to fight and fight and fight, and not see what they were doing. Like he wouldn’t realise they’d try sneak up on him.
Nobody’s smarter than me. Nobody.
He was smart enough to make the dust cloud when he saw what they were trying to do. They probably think he’s still there, instead of where he really is: in the forest, heading away from the camp. He stays low, ducking under ferns and weaving through the trees. They would have probably just kept sending people until he got too tired to fight – and it would have been smart, because he’s tired now, really tired. It would be awesome just to lie down and sleep, but he can’t. Not yet… not when he has a chance to set off the biggest earthquake the world has ever seen.
They’re not going to be ready for it, not even the lady who can do the same stuff he can. The thought makes Matthew angrier still – she shouldn’t have been able to get out the ground. She should have stayed buried.
