Kennedy Awakens

by Greg Alldredge

  Kennedy spoke her thoughts, “Once this storm lifts, we will need to deal with what happened with Decker. There will be questions asked.”

  “No, there won’t…” On the far side of the river, Alleye brought the car lower over Memorial Drive.

  “Alleye, you killed an agent. Things like that don’t go away.” Kennedy pulled her ball of twine from her pocket.

  “For me, they do… Listen… don’t chew worry about me. Things always seem to work out for me. I’m just lucky that way.”

  Kennedy didn’t have the time to argue the fallacy of luck and how it didn’t really exist. There was no fickle hand of fate guiding individuals. Shit just happened. Besides, if Alleye was protected from prosecution of the crime, Kennedy certainly was not.

  The witch concentrated on the student werewolf she’d met in the forest, his human self, not that it should make a difference for a discovery spell. Again, the ball of twine didn’t behave as it normally should. Rather than turn into a bat and flutter off in search of the young man, it pointed a direction like a compass. Something in the storm was affecting not only humans and the weather but magic as well.

  Kennedy didn’t mind being right, but she hated that her stereotype was spot on. She thought she was better than the cranky old woman she let out of the shell. “Down there.” Kennedy motioned with her head. “We will find him in one of the buildings of MIT.”

  Kennedy remembered when the school first opened, with all the fanfare the Industrial Revolution had to offer. At the time, she found it ironic the school opened the same month southern troops fired on Fort Sumter. That irony grew over time. For a second, she marveled how the area had changed over the centuries. Unfortunately, modernity returned to her. For once, it was a snap finding parking on the street.

  The string in her hand served as an outstanding pointer through the deserted college campus. A few of the buildings still had power. Kennedy assumed they had backup generators.

  It was near lunch time. Even the hardest partier student should be rousing by now. Breaking from their hibernation, they should be foraging for food. There should be a line of zombie-like tracks leading through the snow toward the student union or other places food could be found. The pair trudged through the foot of undisturbed snow.

  The pointer directed them up the steps of the Whitehead building. The lights were on, but the building looked deserted.

  “Inside?” Alleye asked.

  Kennedy assumed so. Now was not the time to second-guess her magic.

  “I can’t pick this with my bump gun.” Alleye pointed to a card scanner lock at the entrance.

  “Maybe I can fix that…” In the past, Kennedy had used a small arc of magic energy to pop the lock on these high-tech security systems. All they needed was the correct signal, and the door would open as if by magic. She snickered at her own joke. Index finger outstretched, she expanded her mind to zap the door.

  An unexpected bolt of energy blasted from her finger, scorching her nail, shattering the safety glass of the door and the surrounding wall. The door buckled under the assault but remained locked.

  Blinking her eyes rapidly, Alleye said, “That might have been slightly more magic than chew needed.” She took her arm and started knocking holes in the glass wall. Large sections of the broken barrier pushed through. In no time, she’d made a hole large enough to enter.

  “That was impossible,” Kennedy muttered, shocked by the power in her finger. She sucked on the tip to ease the pain.

  “It worked; I say all is good.” Alleye stepped through and offered her hand to Kennedy.

  “You don’t understand… by the laws of magic, spells work under a scale. The spell I used would barely have enough juice to light a cigarette. It should never blow a door open like that.” She stepped through the hole, dismayed by the energy she unleashed with the simple spell. “Like everything else, magic has laws to follow.”

  “So… chew broke another law.” Alleye snorted. “Listen, I’m used to luck just happening when I’m around. I’m chor lucky charm.”

  “This way then, lucky…” Kennedy knew not to trust luck. It didn’t exist, but she had no logical explanation for the spell shattering the wall. It would do no good to argue with Alleye about something that could not be proved. Now she needed to find Randell. They needed brute strength.

  They took the stairs to the second floor, filled with classrooms. Inside the third door sat a class, tables arranged in a semicircle and another wall of glass. This one separated the small classroom from what looked like a clean room. Beyond the glass partition, there was a lone figure dressed in a white bunny suit, working at a huge desk covered with equipment and a laptop.

  Rather than blast the double door airlock into the clean space, Kennedy pounded on the barrier with her knuckles.

  The lone figure looked up. Even covered head to toe and wearing glasses, she recognized Randell under the protection. The covering did little to hide the wide eyes when he recognized her.

  Alleye found a remote for a wall mounted television and was rolling past snowy channels.

  A voice came over a speaker on the wall. “Wait there, I’ll be right out.” It was Randell’s voice.

  Kennedy split her attention from the blank television screen to Randell as he removed his cleanroom suit. The young man looked smaller than she remembered him and younger. He looked younger than twenty.

  Randell started speaking before the final airlock door opened. “I’m glad you came… I’ve been trying to call you.”

  Kennedy had a series of questions ready for him, but the suddenness of his words surprised her. “Wait… how could you call me?” She held up her shattered phone. “I never gave you my number.”

  “Yeah… I know, sorry… a friend of mine made an app. It can sniff out cell numbers in the surrounding area. After you saved me, I kind of stole your number for later. You never know when a witch might come in handy. Sorry, it was rude of me…” Before Kennedy could complain, he grabbed her phone. “Let me help, I can fix this…” And he walked off to his locker.

  “Do you know what is going on?”

  The door swung open to the small standup locker, books and papers cascaded out in an avalanche. “No, I was hoping you could tell me. I am the only one around. None of the other students have arrived. The others haven’t seen anyone either.” From the locker, he pulled out a phone and started tearing both apart.

  “What are you doing?” Kennedy didn’t remember him this scattered, but he was naked and freezing in the woods. It might have helped focus his mind. “Wait… what others?”

  “I’m changing yours out for a Chinese one. It has been modified so the government can’t track you. Technically, I can’t track you either, unless you allow me too.” He switched the SIM card from hers to the new phone.

  “You did this?” Kennedy watched in amazement as he worked.

  “No, a friend did… one of the others. They call themselves outcasts.”

  Alleye stopped channel surfing long enough to ask, “Outcasts are enrolled in MIT?”

  Randell handed the phone over to Kennedy. “Sure, why not? MIT, Harvard, Boston College. As far as I know, all the major universities, many of the minor ones… They are some real geniuses.”

  Alleye smiled. “Chew right, he is cute.” She went back searching for any active channel.

  “Cute… what?” A red glow stretched over Randell’s face.

  Kennedy tried to remain focused. “If you’re a werewolf, how do you handle classes and your curse?” There were too many things going on at once. Kennedy needed to slow down and concentrate her thoughts on the more important things… like the end of the world.

  “I’m kind of an accidental werewolf.” Randell walked over to a laptop. “You’re not going to find anything on the TV. The cable is out. I think the internet is affected too. Online, all I’m finding is cached or error 404 pages.”

  “Can we stop for a moment long enough to finish at least one conversation?” Kennedy
sat on a nearby stool.

  Both Alleye and Randell said, “Sorry.”

  Kennedy needed to know she could trust this student to not change and kill both her and Alleye if they took him with them. “Please explain what you mean by accidental werewolf.”

  Randell crunched up his face. “Do we have time?”

  Kennedy growled, growing impatient. “Yes, humor me, a brief explanation please.”

  “I come from a long line descended from the Viking warriors of old, and yet by some random chance, I was born with this weak-ass body.” Randell motioned down his sides like a model. “I knew deep inside me lay a great warrior. I am descended from berserkers, wolf-headen, and shield maidens. I should have the body of a Norse god locked inside my genes.”

  “Yet chew got the skinny body… that is bad luck.” Alleye threw the remote down.

  “But that… bad luck can all be changed. What do you know about CRISPR?” Tapping a few keys, he pulled up a presentation.

  “It keeps my veggies fresh?” Alleye looked on with a serious face.

  Kennedy was lost, and Alleye wasn’t helping. “Nothing.”

  He pointed to a screen. “This is from one of the first-year classes I teach.” He flipped tough the presentation slides faster than Kennedy hoped to read them. “I’m not going into the science now, but it is a way to fix damaged genetic code. I was experimenting with my DNA… inserting my genes into a test subject… and I had an incident with a lab mouse.”

  Alleye pulled out a chair and plopped down. “Tell me chew didn’t get bitten by a radioactive mouse and became a superhero…”

  “Not exactly… CRISPR uses a virus to introduce the new genetic material into a host. The virus kind of jumped species from the lab mouse to me.”

  Kennedy stood and took two paces away from Randell. “So you’re a carrier of a new werewolf virus?”

  Alleye pushed the rolling chair to the far side of the room. “You’re like Typhoid Mary… but Werewolf Randy…”

  Randell shook his head. “No, I can’t be contagious. It only worked on me because it had my genetic code locked inside. Everyone but people with my specific genes should be safe.”

  “Chew were making a Randy mouse?” Alleye asked.

  “No… I wanted to wake up the genes that made the Vikings great warriors. There were unintended side effects.”

  “Yeah, chew could say that… Chew now get all furry-like.”

  The conversation made Kennedy’s head hurt. “We need your help. Can I get a yes or no answer on two questions?”

  Randell answered, “Sure.”

  Kennedy held up a finger to silence Alleye before she could speak. “Are you contagious to us, and can you control your shifting?”

  Randell gave nice short answers to both, “Not contagious and yes.” He ruined it by adding, “I still need to be aware of the full moon, I have less control, but yes, over most of the month I have pretty good control over when I shift.”

  Kennedy stepped toward the door. “Great. We have a problem. We need your help.”

  Randell didn’t move. “It is larger than you think. There isn’t much the three of us can do alone.”

  The comment stopped Kennedy at the door. “Can you explain yourself, or do we need to play a game to find out?”

  “The storm and its effects cover more than Boston,” Randell tried to start.

  Alleye quipped, “Storms normally do.”

  “You don’t understand. With no TV or internet, there is no news… I have friends. Outcasts in schools as far south as New Jersey, as far north as Montreal and Toronto in the West. Those friends have other friends…

  “The storm started here but has spread to cover most of North America. Cell service is spotty but still working. Humans have disappeared all over. The few who have not vanished will not wake up this morning. The only ones keeping track of the whole thing are my Fae friends.”

  “That makes no sense. Your friends must be mistaken…” In Kennedy’s world, all magic was local. Relegated to individuals, perhaps small communities. Spells on the order-of-magnitude Randell described were biblical in nature and hadn’t existed since long before she was born. “Nothing has the power to cast the effects of a spell over such a wide area.”

  Alleye blurted out, “What about chor finger?”

  “I don’t know what is and isn’t normal for magic, but I know what is happening all over the continent right now. You have the app, you can log in to and find out.”

  “There’s an app for that?” Alleye asked.

  “What?” Kennedy asked.

  “It is the scary monster face… another friend made it. It is like social media for Fae. There is an outcast group, all encrypted. I will invite you two.”

  It was all moving too fast for Kennedy. Maybe she had grown complacent over the decades, the new technology seemed to have passed her by. Randell had her up and running in no time.

  “Chew got an extra one of those phones?” Alleye asked.

  “Sure, give me your cell. We buy these things by the case from Tao Bao.” Quick enough, Randell pulled another cell out of the locker, switched SIM cards, and handed the phone back to Alleye.

  Unsure of the number involved, she needed a large out of the way place to meet. “We have a few hours before we need to gather. Can you have your friends meet us at Fenway Park at ten tonight?” Kennedy quickly scanned the videos of the strange happenings all over the country. Randell was correct, this event might not be contained to Boston. There were larger questions. The disappearing humans… was this the biblical end of days? “I need to speak to someone. We need to head north to the Mystic River first, then we can travel to Fenway and decide on our actions for tonight… Try to get as many there as possible. Your friends have as much to lose as the humans.” She went to Randell’s laptop. She needed answers. Unfortunately, she doubted she would find them online.

  Kennedy let the others concentrate on the coordination via the monster app. She took the time to search for more mainstream news sources. Randell was correct. She found nothing new, most pages would not load at all. Everything was from before Saint Patrick’s night celebration. It was like the world shut down and logged off once the magic storm hit. She found no mention of the disappeared—with no other name to call the missing humans, it seemed to fit for her. She didn’t want to equate the use of magic with the biblical end times… She did notice similarities with the rapture. Witches were always assumed damned in the eyes of Christians. The same was said about Fae: they had no soul. Like anyone really knew.

  Kennedy had been alive long enough and seen too much to assume every human who disappeared was a righteous Christian. If only the saved were taken, the streets would still be brimming with people fighting the weather to reach work and their chase for the almighty dollar.

  Something else was at play. If not the rapture, something else fiddled with the fabric of reality, causing great changes to shift the world as she knew it. An unknown variable pulled the majority of normals out of the storm and left a handful behind.

  She did read an article about a tear in space-time, or even a collapse of space as the physicist author knew it, and what might be encountered when it happened. She memorized the name for later: Doctor Edward Himmel of Harvard. When it spoke of alternate realities and multiple dimensions, the reading made her heart race. What if the humans still went on about their business and only the Fae and other special humans had been pulled into this storm? The normals hadn’t disappeared from reality, the specials had. The thought made her blood run cold. She didn’t know enough about magic or science to make this sort of leap.

  “You two ready? I can’t find anything here,” Kennedy lied, not wanting to talk about her fears… What could she say? Reality was broken? Standing from the desk, she stepped toward the exit.

  “Told you so… I have the word going out about the meeting at Fenway. Are you worried about the wrong people finding out?” Randell grabbed his coat.

  Kennedy needed to
remain focused on one problem at a time. “I’m betting on your ability to remain hidden. If you have not been picked up by The Authority for playing with your genes, I am hoping the Sylvan and the Fair Folk don’t know about you and your group either. By extension, I am hoping they don’t try to stop us…”

  “Sista, that is a lot of hope,” Alleye said.

  Kennedy shrugged. “As far as I can tell, all we have is hope.”

  “Don’t forget luck.” Alleye slapped herself on the chest twice with the flat of her hand.

  Chapter 15:

  Reality hadn’t shifted too much. The glass still covered the floor of the entrance. The snow still fell at an impressive pace. By midnight, they might have over several feet of the white stuff. It would be near impossible to move about if the snow didn’t let up soon. The Fae might need snowshoes in order to fight.

  Kennedy knew all that was wishful thinking. Her gut told her the battle would happen come hell or high snow… There was too much pent-up animosity between the two sides.

  The trio stepped outside, and all three ducked when a clap of thunder struck directly overhead. Kennedy knew it was close. The crackling sound before the clap and charge in the air caused the hair all over her body to stand on end. The smell of ozone washed over them. Each had their favorite cuss words at the ready to help steady their nerves.

  “We should be safe; all the buildings have lightning rods,” Randell informed them even though no one asked. He picked up his pace, despite not knowing where he was going.

  He did have a clear path through the snow where Kennedy and Alleye had broken the smooth white covering on the way in. He followed the only trail. Slipping now and again on the snow, he didn’t slow in an effort to escape the storm.

  The two women didn’t argue with the younger man. Better to reach the car. It had to offer some protection from the storm. Alleye quipped, “I had a chihuahua that would tinkle on the floor during a thunderstorm.”