by Brian Rowe
“What?” I asked. “But what about Kimber—”
I stopped in mid-sentence, catching the sight that Liesel had seen, and what my dog was now seeing. Way out in the distance, up top the highest peak of the Steamboat Ditch bike trail, was the strangest of activity. I couldn’t make out any faces, but I could see the streaming of bright red lights shooting out from the body of what looked to be a young woman.
Hannah.
“She’s at the top of Steamboat Ditch!” I shouted, turning around and running back to the car. Liesel was already inside, turning on the car ignition.
My dog turned toward me. I could tell she wanted to come with me.
“Stay here, Cinder,” I said. “I’ll be back, OK?”
The dog did what she was told, and I jumped into the passenger seat of Wesley’s car.
“You ready?” Liesel asked.
“Of course I am,” I said, turning around and double-checking for the fortieth time that all the paintball guns were in the black bag.
“Seriously, Cam. Are you ready for this? She has the power of seven witches.”
“I know.”
“She could kill us,” Liesel said. “In seconds.”
“I don’t care. She’s got my sister. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“I just want you to be extra—”
“This isn’t a choice, Leese!” I shouted. “There’s nothing to think about! Let’s go!”
She sighed and nodded. “OK. Here goes nothin’.”
She grabbed my hand, and I grabbed hers. We looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, recognizing this might be the last time we ever see each other alive.
She kissed me on the lips, wiped a tear from her eye, and pulled the car around. We both looked at Cinder, who was sitting calmly near my destroyed home, as we hit the main road, a few seconds later finding ourselves on the Steamboat Ditch bike trail.
“Should only be a minute,” Liesel said. “I know exactly where they are.”
I looked in the rearview mirror. I was astonished to see another car passing by my house.
“Leese, what time is it?”
She didn’t answer me at first.
“Leese?”
She sighed. “It’s 12:05, Cam.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “It’s begun.”
It’s already begun.
KIMBER
She struggled up top the mountain, trying in her elderly state to punch and kick and maim the vicious young woman in front of her. But the harder she fought, the weaker she became, and eventually she had no energy left.
She thought she might get tied up to a rock or a boulder, or, better yet, a plant she could rip out of the ground to save herself. But she didn’t get tied up at all. Instead the young woman before her unleashed a bright red light that smacked her straight in the stomach, and she fell back into a new wooden home.
Kimber Martin found herself in a home-built wooden coffin that stunk of manure.
She tried to get back up, but she felt paralyzed from the neck down. She tried to move her hands, then her feet. But she couldn’t. All she could move was her face.
She tried to speak. “Whhhhhaaaaa…” She tried again. “Dooooonnnnn…” She could only make noises. “Caaaaammmmmmmm…”
“What was that?” Hannah asked, her dress skimpy and sparkly, her crazy long hair blowing in the wind. She grabbed a shovel and started digging the grave for Kimber toward the edge of the cliff that looked out over Reno. “You calling for your big brother? Or your little brother, I should say, since he still looks nineteen, while you look as old as Mother Theresa.”
“HELP!” Kimber shouted. “Helllllp!”
“Oh, shut up,” Hannah said, digging her shovel into some dirt and tossing it onto Kimber’s face. “You can scream as long and hard as you want, but the truth is, nobody’s gonna hear you, and if they did, they wouldn’t care. Trust me. Everyone in the world’s got their own set of problems now.”
“Why…” Kimber had control of her face, but she didn’t have control of her tears. They started building up in her eyes, falling down the sides of her cheeks.
“All will be explained, old lady. I’m just waiting for your brother to come save you. That is, if he can get here in time.”
Her shovel struck the ground again, and already she was making progress on her burial effort. She smacked her lips together and looked out at the smoky house in the distance.
“Speaking of time,” Hannah continued, “it’s just about up. And let me tell you, the pain you’re gonna feel… it’s going to be excruciating.”
Hannah started tapping the end of the shovel against her hands and walked up to Kimber’s comatose body. The girl didn’t look fourteen anymore; at this point, she looked close to sixty.
“You may look middle-aged now, Ms. Martin, but in one minute’s time, the countdown’s really going to begin, and you’re going to start aging a whole year of your life with each passing minute. You think what your brother went through last year was hard? Aging a year every day? That was so insignificant in the scheme of things, it’s hard to believe it was made such a big deal over.”
Hannah kneeled down and picked up her phone to look at the time. She smiled and brought the phone down to her side.
“You ready, Kimber? Here we go…” She waved the shovel up in the air. “Ten… nine… eight…” She started skidding the shovel up against the coffin. “Seven… six… five… four…” She waved the shovel up high in the air. “Let the pain begin! Three! Two! One! Happy birthday to you!”
Kimber brought the shovel down on top of Kimber’s stomach, slamming it so hard that all the air escaped her chest.
Then the pain really began.
As Hannah went back to her shoveling duty, Kimber tried to get a hold of her breathing as she stared up at the blue cloudless sky. The pain was specific to every joint in her body, as she could literally feel herself growing a whole year older throughout the next minute. She was used to this pain by now, having experienced it once an hour for the past day and a half. But this time, as Hannah said, when 12:01 struck, the pain didn’t cease. It continued. With each additional minute that went by, the pain became increasingly violent. By 12:05, Kimber didn’t know if she was going to make it another second.
She continued to hear Hannah shoveling the dirt next to her. And she continued to listen to the soft wind flowing past her coffin. She didn’t hear her brother. She didn’t hear Liesel. It was a given. The pain would continue on in this fatal hour, and the fourteen-year-old Kimber would die an ugly old lady, not warm in her bed, but crying in a coffin.
She tried to move again. She couldn’t. But she knew, even if she could jump out of the coffin and run for her life, she wouldn’t get too far. The pain was too much for her to handle. Running across town wouldn’t help. The spell had been cast. There was nowhere she could go and nothing she could do.
As 12:05 became 12:06, and as Hannah neared completion digging the ditch, Kimber tried to ignore the pain by thinking happy thoughts. She had a lot of events, moments, people, successes, to choose from. She thought about eleven nights ago, when she played the violin for the President of the United States. She thought about her friends, and her favorite teachers, and her parents, who she still couldn’t believe were gone.
But the happy thought Kimber thought of the longest was of her older brother Cameron. He had always been there for her, but nothing had come close to the loyalty and friendship he had given her in the last year. Even though he had been on his deathbed last year, he still got up, rode a taxi across town, and found himself at her spring concert just moments before she played her violin to a packed house. He had trusted in her all of his worries and concerns over the last few months, with his aging backward, with his searching for Liesel, with his journey across California to end this worldwide epidemic. She had no idea if Cameron was close to succeeding, or if he was even in Reno. But she liked knowing, even if she were to die in the next few minutes, that Cameron was still o
ut there somewhere, being a hero, trying everything he could to end the madness.
“Hannah! Let her go!”
The shout from behind her couldn’t have been real. It must’ve been her imagination, especially since the voice had sounded like Cameron’s.
She heard a car come to a stop. She heard the footsteps getting out of it. As the seconds marched on, Kimber realized that maybe what she was hearing behind her wasn’t her imagination after all.
“Caaaaaammmmmm…” she said, looking to her left to see Hannah standing still, a smug little grin on her face.
“Welcome Cameron,” Hannah said, “and welcome… my beloved baby sister.” She took a step forward, then looked down at Kimber. “Who’s ready to have some fun?”
Two of the red lights came shooting out of Hannah’s palms, and Kimber started screaming.
17.
I snatched the largest paintball gun I could find and started running across the large patch of dirt that housed Hannah, Kimber, a coffin, and a cliff. I raced toward Hannah, the gun outstretched in my hand.
I was still running when I pulled the trigger and blasted a shot of silver paint directly at Hannah’s chest. “Get away from my sister, you bitch!”
Hannah fell backward immediately, her raging red streams of light disappearing from her palms. But she didn’t fall down. She just re-adjusted herself and faced me.
“Let her go!” I screamed.
She laughed and took a few steps toward me, passing the coffin on her right. “Oh, Cameron, Cameron, Cameron. You make this so damn easy.”
She pushed her hands out toward me, unleashing not two, but four large streams of red light right at my torso. I fell back and slammed my head against the ground. I tried to grab for the paintball gun, but I couldn’t reach far enough, and by the time Hannah noticed what I was doing, she shot another light at my arm, making it comatose.
“Stop it!” I yelled. “Please!”
Hannah started laughing. “It’s such a damn cliché, Cameron. You showing up here, thinking you’re gonna save the day. Well I’ve got news for you. You’re not.”
“Liesel!” I shouted. I didn’t hear a response. And I didn’t hear her coming. Where the hell did she go? Where is she? “Liesel! Where—”
Hannah shot another stream of light, this one right at my face. It missed, only by an inch or two.
“Unfortunately for you,” Hannah continued, “you’re just no match for an all-powerful witch like me. I, one measly person on this stupid little planet, managed to wipe out the entire human race. What do you think you can do about it? You think you’re capable of stopping me, Cameron? I’m ashamed you would even consider the possibility.”
Another light smashed against my throat. I could feel the pain from my chin to the top of my chest. All of Hannah’s energy headed north of my body, as four more lights slammed against my arms, my chest, my neck. Not a single one hit my legs. I was astonished to discover I could still move my legs. I could jump up and run. I wasn’t paralyzed. I wasn’t a cripple.
It must be because of my powers. It must be because I’m a witch. A big, manly witch who’s getting really pissed off.
I kicked myself off the ground and just barely dodged her next light. When I jumped back up to my feet, she didn’t flinch, merging four streams of light and striking them against my face. I closed my eyes just before—probably a smart idea to keep me from going blind—as the blow pushed me back against the ground. The pain was so fierce I wanted to start screaming.
“Caaaaaaaam!” Kimber screamed. I could tell in just hearing her shout my name that she was continuing to age, fast and drastically. Time was running out.
“Liesel!” I shouted. “Where the hell are you?”
“Good point,” Hannah said. “Where did she run off to, anyway? Did she get scared?”
“Nope,” Liesel said, from a distance. I turned my head just in time to see her sprawled out on a bed of bushes, her M16 sniper paintball gun in her hand. Hannah turned just in time, and Liesel fired, the glob of silver paint striking Hannah directly in her right eyeball.
“Ahhhh!” Hannah screamed. “My eye! My eye!”
Hannah brought her hands to her eye and started walking in circles, disoriented. But Liesel wasn’t done yet. She shot Hannah again, this time on the side of her head. A third time, against her neck. A fourth time, in the chest. A fifth time, in the groin. Hannah looked stunned, just standing there, taking the shots like she had already prepared herself to die.
And then, Liesel appeared out of the bushes, walking like a true warrior, throwing the sniper paintball gun to the ground and strapping the massively large T16 paintball gun to her side. When she approached Hannah, Liesel started to fire, and the blasts at which these blobs of silver paint smashed against Hannah were so fast and loud that one would swear they were real bullets. The paintball gun was so impressive, pumping out rounds of paint a million times a second, that I couldn’t help but smile. Hannah finally fell to the ground, coming to rest on her stomach, and facing the dirt before her.
Oh my God. She’s dead. Hannah’s dead!
I slowly made my way back up to my feet. My eyes, nose, lips, tongue, neck—they were all stinging in pain. It hurt to even blink. But I had to start moving; I had to see Liesel’s brutal, unrelenting destruction upon Hannah’s body.
But most of all, I couldn’t wait to see the new and improved Kimber Martin.
“You got her,” I said to Liesel, who still appeared to be in military mode. “She’s not moving. She’s gone.”
“Don’t celebrate yet,” Liesel said.
“Owww,” Kimber said from the coffin. “Caaaaaam! It hurrrrrts!”
Oh no.
As Liesel kneeled down to inspect Hannah’s body, which was covered head to toe with the paint, I rushed up to the coffin and looked down to see Kimber so old I wanted to cry.
“What—” I said, but before I could continue with my sentence, I heard the sounds of loud, volatile laughter behind me.
And it wasn’t coming from Liesel.
“You two are so very stupid,” Hannah said, rolling over on her back and blasting Liesel into the air with a big ball of light. She wiped the paint from her face and made her way back up to her feet. “It was an honorable try there, Leese. I’ll admit I’m impressed. But you should’ve been the first to know… the silver paint’s not gonna work on a woman with the power of seven witches!”
Hannah blasted more streams of red light at Liesel, two, five, eight, fifteen, shooting Liesel in the air, back and forth, sideways and diagonally, like she was a ragdoll.
“Stop it!” I shouted.
Hannah just laughed, mercilessly enjoying the torture she was inflicting on her younger sister. “Go ahead and try, you piece of shit.”
I looked down at Kimber, who lay in the coffin, in relentless pain, just waiting to die. She looked up at me, getting older by the minute, her face turning skeletal, her eyes calling out for me to either save her or end her misery. I started breathing heavily, a tear rolling down my cheek, as I turned to Hannah, who was striking Liesel down with all she had.
I brought my palms together.
“Hey Hannah,” I said, and when she turned to me, I unleashed a large ball of sparkling green light right at her face, knocking her silver painted body backward.
She grinned, her teeth revoltingly yellow beneath that silver exterior, and shot her red lights back at me. She missed and I fired a green shot back. Part of me wanted to stop and marvel at what my body was doing at this moment, shooting giant green laser beams out of my own palms. But I couldn’t analyze what was happening. I could only think of Kimber, and keep going, until I passed out, until my body wore out, until I died—all of the above.
Hannah struck me in the shoulder, then I struck her in the leg, almost knocking her over. I looked to my right to see Liesel struggling to move; she appeared to be out of this match. It looked like the final duel was between me and Hannah.
“Fight me like a man,�
�� she said, walking toward me with increasing anger. “You don’t have it in you, do you, Cameron? Everything you’ve done in your entire life has taken you to this very moment. Don’t you want to make your little wifey proud?”
I didn’t answer her. Instead I shot two more streams of light, this time against Hannah’s palms, and she shoved the green lights right back at me with her red ones. Before all the lights hit me, I pushed them back at her. I shot out my lights, and she shot out hers, and before I knew it, we had one enormous stream of light hovering ten feet up into the air.
“Oh my God,” I said.
“Look at this!” Hannah said. “It’s like Christmas! Bells will be ringing, Cameron Martin! Silent night, you dumb son of a bitch!”
She leapt forward and shot the light toward me with all her might. I tried to push back, but I couldn’t this time, and the huge stream of light slammed against my chest, knocking me five feet back against the ground.
The back of my head slammed against a sharp rock, and the whole world went fuzzy. I looked up to see four of Hannah, and sixty-four streams of light headed my way. I tried to raise my arms to fight back, but I couldn’t. I looked down at my palms to see them dirtied and beaten, with no more energy to bust out my painful streams of green.
Hannah’s streams continued to hit me from head to toe, and as four Hannahs became one, I realized I was rising into the air. I turned to my right to see Liesel floating up into the air, too, both of us unchained by the laws of gravity due to Hannah’s extra powerful waves of light, the harsh red color growing darker by the second.
“Well, this is it,” Hannah said, bringing us further and further up into the air. I looked down to see Kimber, still old, still in pain. I could see over the cliff, all the way down to the sharp rocks below. I could see out over all of Reno, my hometown, the place I was born in, the place I was to die in. “You two really disappointed me. You didn’t bring me Dr. Rice first of all, so I had to take care of him myself! Second, all you could think of to destroy me with were some measly little paintball guns? What’s the matter with you? And third, you got here past noon! You got here way too late to ever hope you could save humanity! I’m severely disappointed, not just for your sakes, but for Kimber’s, too. Here’s a poor little girl, who’s now going to see not just my bright, shining lights, but that bright, shining light at the end of a tunnel! Kimber! Look fast! Because I’m throwing your brother and my little sister over the cliff!”
