“Or camping out on an old train?” the girl said, jousting with Zack. “I see you, too, homeboy.”
Jason looked back and forth between the two of them. He was starting to realize there were a lot of people at Angel Grove High that he didn’t know.
“Oh, no,” Billy said from behind them. A moment later, the whole rock face on that side of the hill collapsed, knocking them all over and covering them with dust. They got to their feet, unharmed but coughing and sneezing. “Whoa,” Billy said.
All of them saw it at once. The collapse had exposed a wall of black obsidian, like glass. It was cracked in spots, maybe from the explosion Billy had set off. And inside, there were . . . some kind of round objects . . .
“I’ve never seen glass like this before,” Billy said.
Zack grabbed an old pickax and stepped toward the glass wall.
The others tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen. He struck that glass wall as hard as he could. One of the round things fell out at Billy’s feet. Zack smashed away and the rest of them fell out.
“It’s like a stone or coin or something,” Billy said as he picked it up.
They all gathered to take a look. Jason thought they did look like coins. The one in Billy’s hand was flickering with a deep blue light. Were they battery-powered? How had they gotten into the rocks? Man, they were cool. He looked more closely at the one Billy held. A rocky crust covered part of it. Through that, light and colors swirled on its surface. Was that a pattern? It was hard to tell through the crust, but it didn’t look like a machine. How was it glowing like that? Jason had never seen anything like it.
Billy was practically glowing himself, with delight and pride. “My dad always knew the best spots.”
“We all found them,” Zack said. “And if they’re worth money—”
“No, he found them,” Jason said, nodding at Billy. “Chill out.”
Then Kimberly said, “Do you hear that?”
All of them did. Sirens, getting closer.
“Mine security!” Zack said.
They ran in different directions. Jason got to the van and got it started as Billy piled in. A mine security van and two ATVs were chasing around after the other three kids. Jason gunned the van down the sloping dirt road. “You gonna leave the others?” Billy shouted.
He hauled the van around in a one-eighty and nearly collided with one of the ATVs. The girls were running down the path that ran parallel to the road. Jason caught Billy’s eye and nodded at the steering wheel. “You drive!” He let the wheel go and jumped into the back of the van.
“I don’t really drive!” Billy shouted back.
“Then don’t really drive a little closer to the edge of the road so I can pull them in!”
The van swerved around as Billy got control. Well, sort of. Jason threw the sliding door open. “Come on! Get in!” he shouted at the girls. They ran faster. He pulled them in, and all three of them spilled onto the seat.
“What about the other guy?” Billy shouted.
Jason looked at the girls. They looked at him. Then they all shouted, “Just go!” Zack could take care of himself.
“Downhill!” Jason yelled. “Just drive to the lights! Go!” Jason climbed into the front passenger seat and looked ahead. “Keep going! We’re almost out—look, there’s the road and the railroad crossing!”
The crossing lights on the tracks flashed red and the crossing gate was coming down to block the road. “Guys, there’s a train,” Kimberly said nervously. They could all see it coming.
“Keep going,” Jason said. “We got it.” At least he thought they did.
A second later, out of nowhere, Zack slammed down onto the windshield and scrambled to hold on to the hood. All of them were screaming at each other. Jason ripped open the side door again and reached to get a grip on Zack. Kimberly helped. They all fell onto the backseat again. “Are you crazy?” Jason shouted.
Zack was grinning. “Yes, I am!”
Billy kept his foot on the gas. They were getting closer to the crossing. “We got it, we got it, we got it,” Jason said over and over again. The train was coming fast, but they would make it. Sure they would. The van barreled closer to the crossing. Jason leaned forward in his seat like he could push the van to go faster. It was going to be close. Real close . . .
Too close, he realized, too late to do anything about it. The train was right on them, blaring its horn. Glare from its headlight filled the inside of the van. They crashed through the crossing gate, splintering its wooden arms—and a split second later, the train crashed into them.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Sleep Robber pitched and rolled in a heavy sea. “Jake! Pull up the nets!” Sam Scott shouted over the rising storm. The weather had changed fast, and they needed to get out of there before the nets fouled and they lost their catch.
The nets rose out of the water, wriggling with fish that gleamed in the boat’s spotlights. The winch boom swung over the deck and released the nets. Their catch flopped into the hold. Something in the middle of the pile of fish hit the deck with a heavy thud. It was hard to see what it was until they got closer.
“What is that?” Sam asked.
Inside the boat’s hold there seemed to be some kind of frozen body. A faint green glow appeared. Then its eyes burst open.
Jason woke up in the morning, stretched—and remembered the chase. Remembered the train!
He jumped out of bed. His window was open. He must have come in that way. But how—? He looked down at himself. Everything was intact. He felt okay. He felt great, in fact. His knee didn’t hurt at all. But the train . . .
The red coin from the glass wall in the hillside was in his jeans. How had it gotten there? He didn’t even remember picking it up. Jason turned it over in his hands. The red glow flowed around to the other side of it, almost like it was reacting to his presence.
Something about it spooked him. He tucked it into his desk drawer and headed for the bathroom. At least everything in there was normal . . . until Jason turned on the water to wash up and he saw the coin out of the corner of his eye. It was sitting on the corner of the sink. How—?
I just put it in my desk, Jason thought. It’s like the thing is following me . . .
No. On top of everything else, that idea was too much. Jason ducked over the toilet and threw up, just from the stress and weirdness of it all. Getting his balance, he caught the edge of the sink—and the corner of it snapped off in his hand. He looked at the broken piece of ceramic. How was that possible? How was any of it possible?
Kimberly looked in the mirror, uneasy from strange dreams. Or were they memories? No, they couldn’t be. Her phone chimed with text messages. She looked down to swipe them away. The gold-edged coin with its pink pattern was next to her phone. Her phone kept chiming. Finally, she looked at one of the messages. It was a picture of Amanda, Harper, and another girl sticking their tongues out. They wanted to rub her face in it. Hurt and angry, Kimberly squeezed the phone tight. She didn’t know she was doing it until it snapped in her hand. Shards of the glass screen fell to the floor.
Amazed, she looked at what she’d done. Then she squeezed the phone harder, crumpling it into a tiny ball of electronics and twisted metal.
Whoa, Kimberly thought. She was a little bit frightened. But at the same time, she was a whole lot excited.
Billy Cranston shot out of bed when his alarm went off, and fell over, feet tangled in his sheets. He turned off his alarm and looked around. When he saw himself in the mirror, he was stunned. He still wore the clothes from yesterday, and he was still covered in dirt from the explosion. His hair was dirty and tangled. Was he remembering it right? The black glass wall, the train . . .
The coin. There was that coin on his nightstand. He picked it up and looked at it. There was something about it, something weird, that blue pattern inside the encrusted
gold edge. He decided he’d better hide it. He pulled on his closet door, forgetting it was stuck. It came loose and sailed across the room, crashing off his desk and breaking his window.
“Billy!” his mother called from downstairs. “What’s happening in there?”
Billy shoved the door back onto its track. He had no idea how to answer her. What was happening in here? How was he alive? And when had he gotten so strong?
CHAPTER NINE
Billy was feeling pretty good about himself when he got to school on Monday. Things were weird, but that was fantastic! As he reached up to get a book from the top shelf of his locker, somebody knocked it out of his hand. Billy turned and saw the bully from detention. “Where’s your bodyguard?” he sneered. He grabbed Billy’s wrist.
“What are you doing?” Billy asked. He wasn’t afraid. A little nervous, maybe, the way he always got in social situations, but he’d walked away from a train crash. He wasn’t scared the way he used to be.
“I’m gonna snap your wrist,” the bully said.
He leaned on Billy’s wrist with all his weight, and Billy just stared at him. Then he let go. People were watching. The bully got desperate. He reared back and head-butted Billy . . . but Billy didn’t even move, and the bully pitched straight over backward like he’d gone headfirst into a brick wall. He lay flat on his back, right in front of a whole hallway full of Angel Grove students.
Someone in the crowd said, “Billy Cranston just knocked Colt Wallace out cold. Bam, dude. Bam.”
Billy closed his locker. So that’s the bully’s name, he thought. He walked down the hall and the sea of kids parted to let him through. Billy couldn’t help but grin.
At lunch, Billy Cranston was suddenly a legend amid Angel Grove’s outcasts and freaks. They all wanted to hear the story, and he enjoyed telling it. “I said, ‘Hey, I’m not a violent man. But if you must come at me . . . come at me, bro.’”
Another kid walked up, offered Billy a fist bump, and said, “Down he goes!”
Everyone fell silent as Kimberly Hart suddenly appeared among them. It was like a visit from a goddess. Billy tried to stay casual. “Oh, hey. Kimberly Hart.”
“Billy, we need to talk,” she said, and walked away again.
Billy looked around at his friends’ stunned faces. He started to say something, then just smiled. As he hurried after Kimberly, he heard one of them say, “Since when does he know Kimberly Hart?”
“Billy’s awesome.”
His smile got bigger.
Kimberly and Billy headed down to the end of the service counter, where steam and dirty dishes kept everyone else away.
“Hey,” Kimberly said. “Do you feel weird?”
“Weirder than usual?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Different.”
He nodded back. Kimberly put her coin down on the counter. Billy put his next to it. Jason appeared from behind them and added his. Some of the crusty, fossilized stuff has fallen off, Billy thought. The patterns in them are really interesting.
“Listen, we know something happened up there,” Jason said. “I’m not the same.”
“Me neither—I’m strong,” Billy said. He still couldn’t believe it.
“How strong?” Kimberly asked.
Billy searched for the right word. “Insanely strong.”
“I feel like we need to go back up there,” Kimberly said.
They were looking at each other, thinking it over, when they heard a whirring noise. The three coins hovered a few inches above the counter’s surface. Jason slapped them back down onto the counter and held them there. He could feel the counter beginning to overheat. Suddenly some soda cans that were lined up on the other end exploded.
The three new friends—if that’s what they were—locked eyes.
“We’re going back there today,” Jason said.
Officer Meinen had been with the Angel Grove Police Department for seven years. Long enough to see some weird stuff. But this was the weirdest, for sure. After he interviewed Sam Scott and his crew on the Sleep Robber, he let them go and started a careful investigation of the scene. First, he looked over the deceased without touching her. She looked frozen. That was weird all by itself. She was in water. How was she frozen? Plus, her body was bent in strange ways, like some huge force had crushed her into that position. And the weirdest thing of all was that she seemed . . . well, something about her seemed old, but Meinen didn’t know what. He noticed something stuck to the woman’s hand. It was perfectly round. Some kind of disk, or coin. He bent down to reach for it.
At the same time, she reached up for him.
CHAPTER TEN
A winch pulled Billy’s mother’s van up onto a flatbed truck as they passed by in Kimberly’s BMW. The wreckage was so crushed and twisted, no one inside could have survived the impact. Jason noticed Billy clutched his coin in one hand.
“We should keep going,” Kimberly said as they continued on.
When they got to the blast site, they saw Zack was already there, poking around in the hole in the glass wall.
“Find anything interesting?” Jason called.
Zack shook his head. “But if I do, I’m keeping it.”
“We know why you’re here,” Kimberly said. She didn’t feel like dealing with his tough-guy pose.
“Oh yeah?” Zack said. “Did you guys wake up surprised to be alive and jump over a house?”
“Yes,” Billy said. “No. Kind of. Things are different. We’re different.”
Kimberly walked over to the glass wall. “You’re Zack, right?” she asked.
“Yup.”
“You still go to Angel Grove?” Jason honestly didn’t know.
Zack looked away. “Sometimes.”
There is some kind of trouble there, Jason thought. A family thing. But he wasn’t going to ask.
“The other girl was here,” Zack added. “About an hour ago. She didn’t want her coin, and I told her I would gladly take it. She didn’t love that idea.”
Billy pointed up and over Zack’s head. “You mean that girl right there?”
They all turned to see her looking down from the top of the rocks.
“Hey,” Jason called. “It’s us. Come on down.” She took a step back. “We should all talk about this,” he said, taking a step in her direction.
She took off running, Zack following close behind.
Kimberly held up a hand as Jason started to go after her. “Let me handle this,” she said, sprinting off. Soon she overtook Zack. Trini reached the rock wall first and scaled it like she was a spider. After a moment, the rest of them followed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Kimberly got to the top of the rock formation and saw the girl—what was her name, anyway?—at the edge of a deep chasm. On the other side of the drop was another sloping rock ledge. “Stop,” Kimberly said. “Just talk to me.” The girl turned to face her. “You have a coin. We have a coin,” Kimberly said. She took a step forward. “We should talk about this. I mean, we don’t—”
Then the girl jumped. She made it all the way across the chasm with room to spare, and landed in a crouch on the other side. Zack had just gotten to the top of the rock. He saw the girl land and shouted, “You’re crazy!” With a big grin he added, “But so am I!”
“Whoa,” Kimberly said. “Zack, wait . . .”
“No, I got this. I got this,” he muttered, ignoring her. Then he launched himself across the chasm. He wasn’t nearly as graceful as the girl. When he landed, he plowed into her and they both hit the ground.
“I got her! Just jump across!” he panted.
Kimberly looked at Jason. “Let’s go. Jump with me.”
Jason glanced over at Billy. “I’m gonna jump across with her, and then you jump.”
He and Kimberly jumped. She landed and did a perfect cheerleader’s roll. Jason cra
shed much like Zack had. Wincing with pain, he tried to reassure Billy. “No problem! Piece of cake! You got this! It’s fun!”
“It’s such a far jump . . . ,” Billy muttered as the others joined in cheering him on.
He shook his head, like he was talking to himself—then he sprinted for the edge and jumped! He crashed into the lip and scrambled over. “I did it! I did it!” he shouted, hands up and dancing around. Jason clapped and smiled—and then Billy lost his balance and fell over the edge.
Jason ran to the edge and looked down. “Billy!”
No answer.
They all looked at each other.
“Did we just kill that dude?” Zack wondered. “What do we do?”
There was a moment of deathly quiet. Then they heard Billy’s voice. “Hey, guys! You gotta jump down here! There’s water! You gotta see this!”
With a broad smile, Zack turned to Jason. “See you down there. Bring the crazy girl,” he said, and then he jumped.
His energy was contagious. Jason looked at Kimberly. “Come on, you guys, let’s go!”
He jumped. The two girls stood next to each other, looking over the edge into the darkness. “This whole thing is insane,” Kimberly said. She smiled at the other girl. “I’m Kimberly.”
“I know who you are,” the other girl said. “Everyone does. You know my name?”
Kimberly felt bad about it, but she didn’t.
The girl studied Kimberly, a hard, judgmental stare. “My name’s Trini, not that you’ll remember it.”
“Come on!” Jason’s voice echoed up from the bottom of the chasm. “Jump!”
Trini started to leave. “Wait!” Kimberly said. “Trini. Can I get a sip of your water? I’m dying.”
Trini looked at her water bottle. There was a little left. “Don’t finish it,” she said, and held the bottle out.
Power Rangers - The Official Movie Novelization Page 3
