Age of Power 1: Legacy

by Jon Davis

  Once outside, I didn’t actually go anywhere. Instead, I stood in the driveway to see if I could gauge where this sound was coming from. Quieting my breathing, I listened. Wind, cars in the distance, people talking inside the house…my mom inviting the Housemans over tomorrow for a game and dinner…

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to see Brand’s parents. I didn’t want to deal with how I was feeling about the loss of my friend. I had to admit that I was using this odd noise to do something to break away from the grief and pain. And getting away from that helped me begin to understand that noise surrounded us all the time. It’s just that people tended to ignore it. People focused on what was important at the time, and usually, noise went into the background of the mind. Now, for me, the noise was the focus. That meant that I had to listen to all the surrounding noise, just as I had at the memorial.

  Small rustles against the ground, engines starting, footsteps on sidewalks, shoveling slushy snow, grumbling man, mud sloshing… thump—thump—thump—thump… Hello!

  Lifting my head, I ran down to the road as I continued to hear the fast beat. Looking beyond the highway past our house, I could hear the fast thumps against the ground. Slowly, I began to isolate the sound and listen for that one repeating pitch of the noise. It didn’t work out that way. I grabbed my head when pain spiked. The tree-filled hills to the west wavered in my sight as white noise smashed into my brain.

  Slowly, I got it back under control. It helped when I used the sound of the wind blowing through the trees to focus on. Riverlite was in the crook of a valley where old glaciers had cut into the earth as they’d retreated. Torn ground became tree-filled hills curving around the west side of Riverlite. A forest spread across hills of varying heights.

  I realized that the thumping was coming from the hills, leading me to the north. Dirt roads spread throughout the hills to the edge of the rift valley. I ran across the highway, following the sound. It wasn’t easy to do. I kept losing the sound amid all the white noise hitting my ears. But whatever the source, it was repeating enough for me to get a rough direction.

  I ran off the highway onto Wallingford Road. A two-lane stretch, it curved around Riverlite heading from the highway to Main Street. I started jogging on the right side of the road, listening for the one sound amidst the chaos. It wasn’t easy. When I ran past the town’s power plant on the edge of town, the smell of whatever they had put in the natural gas pipes that fed into the plant distracted me.

  Although it was a good use of nearby gas pockets, it wasn’t helping me focus on one sense over everything else. Then I ran into something worse. On the other side of the road was one of the old city dumps. I never did understand why anyone would put a dump so close to town. But they had. Soon enough, though, I moved beyond the odor.

  Picking up the strange sound, I found that I could barely hear it. The thump was soft, distant. I grunted the intermittence of the thumping against the other noise. Repeatedly I would find the sound and then lose it to some new distraction. A farm dealership with running tractors, a loud wedding party, cars honking on their way past, and even the sound of a mini-bike—they all caused me to lose focus on that thumping.

  But I lost the sound altogether when I got too close to the traffic on Main Street. With a sigh, I crossed the street and stood at the corner of a road near a Casey’s, a gas station and convenience store. After a moment of hearing only the traffic, I knew that I’d lost it.

  Dude, you “lost it” a long time ago!

  I smiled, remembering Brand making that joke once. We had been standing here, on this corner, and we had been trying to decide what to do for fun. Usually, we would go to the town swimming pool just across the river, or we would hang out underneath the train trestle that crossed it. That day, I’d suggested that we should just go all the way to the valley park on the other side of the hills. A long walk, but the scenery was worth it. But not to Brand; that was when he’d told me that I had lost it.

  I realized just then that, for the first time since his death, I was smiling at something about Brand. And I was doing it without getting a lump in my throat. I realized that the distraction had definitely done something to break my depression. Before my mind could lead back to the fact of his death, though, the mysterious sound returned. But now, what had been thumping against soft ground had changed into hard, smacking impacts against asphalt.

  I looked in the direction the thumps were coming from when the repetitious noise increased in frequency. However, looking past Main Street’s bridge, I saw only cars on the road, each with their own low thrum of engine sounds. But none of them created the repetitious sound I was following. But then, my gaze followed one car as it turned on Culbertson Avenue, near the swimming pool. At the corner, something moved—a blur of some kind. I blinked, and it was gone.

  I cocked my head, continuing to look, and after a moment, I shrugged it off. I heard the thumps moving to the north, then shifting eastward. Somewhere along the way, the sound had crossed the river. For a moment, even the sound of the traffic next to me couldn’t block it out. Whatever it was, the sound was fast—very fast. I glanced at the clock on my cell phone to see that it had traveled six miles in less than a couple minutes. That is, if I was right about where it had started.

  Keeping my focus on what I was hearing, I began to follow it in the same direction it was going. I moved at a brisk pace, but I knew that, whatever it was, the sound was moving back and forth to the east and north, as though it were going along streets in the neighborhood. From its speed going through the town, I wondered if I were hearing a motorcycle, bored out so that it gave off that sound.

  I shook off the idea. Growing up with the Housemans and Brand’s love of car and motorcycles gave me a familiarity with the noise of cycle engines. This was no engine. I had to stop listening when I passed a lumberyard. Naturally, saws were running.

  Following all that noise started giving me a headache. It stopped me for a moment. And, with the loss of focus, the thumping faded into the background noise. It snapped me back to reality, and I realized how stupid I was acting. I had no idea how far I could push things. Good exercise for the talent, yes, but how long could I go before it damaged something inside? So it was a good thing that I stopped when I ran into something that ruined my concentration altogether. And it had nothing to do with sound.

  I saw that I was walking past the still closed Kerrington Hardware Store. In the months since the Day, I’d heard that Brett Kerrington had stayed down south to retire. Fine by me. The store could burn down, for all I cared. I shoved back the bad memories and crossed the street near a used car dealership.

  Passing Celia’s Café, I ignored the sounds of clinking dishes and silverware. Just then, I heard the rapid thumps again. This time they echoed faintly off the buildings, but it was close enough that I thought I might see the source of the sound. Then I noticed something else as I looked around at the people. They weren’t reacting to the sound.

  I looked across the street and saw a couple teenagers walking into a store. They passed one guy coming out of a barbershop. He stopped, put his baseball cap on, and waved at another couple going into a flower store. Others were getting in and out of cars, and vehicles were driving on Main Street. And not one person was reacting to or looking for any odd noises.

  I continued to look around until a movement out of the corner of my eye drew my attention to the top of the United Bank building. I looked, and I saw a woman in a black and purple leather outfit with a hood and facemask. It was an odd outfit, and that an odd place for anyone to be, period. But before I could get a closer look, she pulled back out of sight. I let the unusual sight go when the sound came again. This time, for a moment, it sounded like the sound of someone running on pavement. But it was moving at such a high speed that it confused me. It took me a moment before I realized that it was closing in towards me.

  Without watching where I was going, I ran down the sidewalk, looking for the source of the sound. Crossing the street t
o Library Square, I saw nothing. I moved toward the building with increasing annoyance over the mystery of that sound. And mystery was definitely not my favorite genre.

  “Vaughn?” I heard. I turned to see Dana coming out of the library and locking the front door. I’d been so busy looking for the noise that I’d walked almost all the way up the stairs. I looked around to reorient myself. I saw two kids playing near the memorial wall.

  I barely glanced at Dana as she joined up with me. She said, “Vaughn, how are you doing? I meant to come and check on you, maybe get you out of the house. Are you doing okay?”

  Distracted, I simply said, “Um, yeah, I’m doing all right. Look, have you been…”

  I stopped talking when I looked across the street. There was a person wearing black leathers and a facemask. The costume—suit—or whatever, looked like the same design as the woman on the bank wore. He was standing in front of the newspaper office. Then I blinked, and he was gone.

  I muttered, “Wait, what—how?”

  Before I could react, a loud bang came from Main Street. My heart leapt into my throat as I whipped around—knowing what I’d see. I heard enough of that sound on the Science Channel. A car’s gas tank had exploded. To my horror, as Dana and I looked at the burning car, we saw the tank of the car next to it explode, and then the one after that. From east to west, the parked cars on our side of Main were exploding as their gas tanks ignited. It happened so quickly that all Dana and I could do was watch, frozen with shock.

  My feeling of terror worsened when the explosions happened again on the other side of Main Street. I saw people react, trying to run from their cars or, strangely enough, toward them. Worse, cars already driving on the road began to go up in blasts. I pulled Dana down as one car blew up just as it passed the memorial wall in front of the square. We could only stare as the car flew up and then crashed to the ground, upside down and burning. Shrapnel was flying everywhere. I could hear pieces hit walls, smash glass, and…people.

  We flinched with every new explosion. Controlling my fears, I followed the blasts and I saw a faint blur near the end of an SUV before it too exploded. Then it was gone, and the cars—both moving and parked—exploded in dark smoky blasts. Worse, the secondary damage was ripping into the storefronts. Fragments from the exploding cars slammed into the large glass display windows, spraying bystanders with jagged pieces. I looked just as one woman came out of a store in a dazed panic just in time to have a car explode right in front of her.

  More thunderclaps sounded as explosions continued down the streets out of our sight to the east. I tried to understand the cause of the blasts, but I couldn't. At most, I caught a blur. And it disappeared so fast that even the shape was impossible to discern.

  Then my hearing got involved as something boomed loud, making me cry out and duck. Painful ringing slammed through my eardrums. Like a sonic boom right next to me. Dana grabbed me and yelled, "Vaughn! Pull yourself together! People are in serious trouble! Stop panicking!”

  I looked up at her, wincing from the pain in my ears. I couldn’t say anything, I was too busy trying not to go deaf. Then a muffled rumble started from the east. Cars exploded with flames from their engines as secondary blasts fired off. That was when I saw the two kids huddling down behind the memorial wall. They were crying with fear, not moving.

  Behind me, Dana yelled, “Oh, Gaia!” She pointed at the explosions of cars. They were closing in toward the memorial wall, and each explosion was getting bigger. Without thinking, I yelled for the kids to run. I knew what was coming. That statue was too tempting a target for whatever this was. A fast attack predator plane, a missile, a freaking laser—I didn't know.

  Whatever it was would shred their bodies. But, as frightened as they were, the kids didn't run. It turned out that that was a good thing. What came next missed them. They ducked just as the wall violently exploded. We had time to see it fly toward us, passing over the children’s heads harmlessly.

  I screamed. At the same time, everything I heard began to lengthen and intensify. Muffled roars turned to low rumbles of thunder while cries of pain became deep, elongated growls. I felt something rumble deep inside my body. Vibrations began rapidly moving up from deep in my throat. When I opened my mouth, raw force rushed from me exploding like a fire hose releasing a high-pressure stream of water. My eyes narrowed to slits, taking in only the stonework arcing toward us. As it came closer, the wall blew apart at the edges. But the main part—the statue—was still coming directly at us.

  I mentally pushed at the sound of my scream, and it focused even tighter. I could see cracks building up throughout the statue as it closed in. Then, just as it was about to crash into us, the marble soldier blew apart—bursting into a cloud of dust and gravel right before it would have crushed us. Without thinking, I turned and covered Dana as much as I could. The world turned silent for a split-second as my nerves sang, thrumming throughout my body.

  Then, after a moment, the air came alive with sirens and the sound of screams. We slowly looked up to see that yes, we were alive, and no, we hadn't been utterly crushed by the large, flying marble wall and soldier.

  Straightening, I turned to see Dana looking at me with a mix of awe and…well, something that wasn’t fear. For some reason, I thought there should have been fear, but there wasn’t. I pushed back the odd thought and looked away, more than a bit stunned at what had just happened. This time, I knew what I had done, and she'd seen me do it. But no one else had. I was sure of it.

  They were too busy dying or screaming for help.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Everything was gray. Black smoke poured from so many cars that, with the slightest wind from the north, it broke into a gray haze that dulled all color. It didn’t help that snow-heavy clouds blocked the sky soon after the bombings. In this dull lit world, everyone did their best to save the victims of the bombings.

  The EMTs, police, and volunteers from town and the region worked through the debris; all trying to find survivors. It wasn’t easy. There were so many people hurt. And the hardest for us to find were those who had been crushed beneath debris. Thanks to the numerous blasts waves, structural collapse had occurred in many the storefronts.

  With people buried underneath fallen walls and ceilings, I had to use my hearing to find them. It ripped into me that I couldn’t save all the ones that I found. Inside, a part of me screamed that it wasn’t fair. The rest of me just accepted that not much had been fair since Yama had cut across the sky. I pushed on, though, helping where I could.

  The hardest thing of all was that I had to walk past the cars as firemen got into them. But I couldn’t ignore the dead, or worse, the living and burned, not when I could hear their screams when they were trapped. Still, I kept going. I had to. With my hearing, I couldn’t help but hear the cries for help.

  Time passed, and I only realized that the daylight was fading when I saw the few surviving streetlights come on. Lighting put up by police quickly joined them, and I kept going in that light until someone touched my shoulder. I looked and saw a man in a fireman’s jacket with a very dirty police uniform underneath. With his gray-streaked face, it took me a moment to see that it was Chief Sinclair. I stared at him dumbly.

  He hiked a thumb over his shoulder and said, “Vaughn, go get some water! You need a break!

  I looked at him a few moments longer, too worn out to react. Then it hit me what he had said, and with a nod, I took a break. Seeing that emergency workers had set up tents, I went over and grabbed a water bottle from a barrel full of them. Drinking it at the entrance of the tent, I watched Sinclair walk the street with blueprints in hand, talking to people. He’d look the papers over before giving out orders to rescue workers. I thought about it and realized he’d been doing that all day. I’d just been taking the directions without even considering that he’d been giving them.

  It occurred to me that Sinclair was making hard decisions that I could never make myself. He was choosing between the safety of the rescue w
orkers and the victims still trapped in the wreckage. He had to decide on whether it was too dangerous to try to rescue them or not. That meant victims had to wait for better equipment to make it safe to get them out. It hit me that we were bodies, dead and living, we were all bodies. Sinclair was making sure that the rescue crews weren’t going to end up in the ‘dead’ category.

  I finished the water as I watched the police bringing in more lights. They were being taken off trucks from other towns. People were coming to help. I couldn’t have been happier. We needed the searchers. As the night deepened, I knew there was still so much to do. With that thought, I tossed the bottle in the trash and headed out.

  Just as I started out the tent, Chief Sinclair came up to me. He shook his head, as he said, “No. No way. You’ve done enough Vaughn. I want you inside the library now.”

  I looked at him. “Come on, Chief. People have been going in and out all night. Why pick on me?”

  Chief Sinclair gestured downward with his head. “Look at your hands Vaughn. You’re so out of it, you haven’t even noticed, have you?”

  I looked and stared. All this time, I hadn’t even noticed that I shredded the gloves given to me by the emergency workers. I also hadn’t realized how cut up my hands had become during the last few hours.

  Smartly, I said, “And they don’t even sting. Heh.”

  Chief Sinclair chuckled softly. He said, “They will, trust me. Come on, you need to clean up before they get infected.”

  “But...but if I put on new gloves they should be okay.” I said. I really wanted to get back to rescuing people.

  But the Chief shook his head once and clapped a hand on a shoulder. “Uh uh. Inside, Vaughn. Let’s go.”

  With a sigh, I went with him. Heading past the tents, we walked over to the stairs. I noticed the last of the ambulances leaving just then. There would probably be more. Then we slowed down as we passed near the smashed memorial. Someone had cleaned away the pieces and pushed them into a pile at the side of the steps. I winced when Chief Sinclair knelt down near the pile.