The pain radiated out down my nervous system like wildfire and, snap, just like in the office, just like in the graveyard, my mind and body hit that zone. Time, at least my perception of it, slowed, pain became simply a series of indicators instead of crippling agony, and every muscle in my body was primed and ready.
Even so, whatever had hit me was forceful enough to send my unbraced body into a twisting spiral, flung off my feet. I landed in a heap on the pavement but I was already in motion, pushing myself back to my feet. As I reoriented, testing my arm as I moved, I could see McDaniel staring at me with his mouth agape.
There was something lodged in my shoulder, I could feel it, but a glance told me it was only a sharp shard of rock, no more than two inches long. It would be messy to clean and probably bleed horribly later, but for now, the rock itself was jammed in so good it was staunching the bleeding. Nothing I couldn’t handle, at least not in this state I was in.
Without realizing it, I had been counting the time between shots. That subconscious count informed me that the sniper hadn’t shot any faster than once every twenty seconds. As I pushed off into a full sprint, I figured it was theoretically possibly I could make the building before he shot one of those rocks into my skull. Not that I would let that stop me.
I had only one thought, one focus right now: Stop this man before anyone else died. I ate pavement in rapid strides. Exactly at twenty seconds, another sonic boom shattered the last remaining windows in the apartment building as a street light right to my left was blown neatly in half. I hit the front doors, now consisting of metal frames with a few hanging shards of jagged glass, and burst into the front lobby.
“Irene, I’m going to pray that the fact all I’m hearing is you panting as proof you’re alive and in the lobby,” Rachel said in my ear. “What’s your situation?”
I had caught my breath already and I hit the stairs before I answered. I wasn’t going to lose focus now ... the sliver of my mind that was free for analytical thought was wondering if that was the trick to this: a totality of focus on one purpose. Raw willpower focused into a razor edge. Poetic, but hard to scientifically quantify.
“Doesn’t matter, not like you can help,” I whispered as I bounded up flights of stairs. I was always athletic, I had been since I was a little girl, but I was amazing myself today. The Whiteout would be good for one thing at least: the next Olympics would be spectacular. I rounded the stairs and realized I had gone too far.
Every access door to this point had the locks punched through with melted jagged holes. This one didn’t, which meant, most likely, the rock thrower was in the floor below. In a fit of irresponsibility, I found myself vaulting over the handrail, neatly landing on the next landing down. I pushed through the door, senses straining, wondering if I wasn’t just going to collect a rock in my chest for my trouble.
My assailant wasn’t in this hallway, I could see. What I could see was that the apartment doors had been blasted open in what seemed systematic fashion. I could even see where he had stopped. What I couldn’t see, but could feel, was the skin-crawling, gut-twisting feeling of a Pushed approaching, the growing intensity I took to mean he was coming closer. He probably heard the landing door slam open, or the clatter I probably caused jumping down like a spider monkey. Before I let my focus wander from too much second-guessing, I slipped into the nearest blasted open apartment, trying to quietly push the door back in it’s original position.
“I don’t know who you are, but I’m warning you: I will shoot you if I have to!” The voice was angry, desperate, confused. “I only wanted to find my wife. I don’t want to hurt her, even if she is cheating on me!” There was a sob and another ear-popping sonic boom, along with the sounds of what was probably another door blown open. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone, but they wouldn’t tell me where she was! I just want my wife!”
Now more footsteps, they were coming close now. I had no idea what I would be running into, but I wasn’t going to risk being seen to look. I would have to wing it when he came close. I held my breath, just to be that much quieter. There was the crunch of some broken glass right outside the door. Every muscle I had, coiling in anticipation as they had been, suddenly fired and I sprang out, knocking the door off of it’s remaining hinge.
My best guess is that this man had been in the military, maybe even recently. Iraq veteran perhaps? He had a high-and-tight haircut and the build of a man who had been in great shape and still kept up with himself. The Pushed was stripped to his waist and had fatigue pants on.
Unlike the other Pushed I had seen so far, he seemed less outwardly changed, with only one major physical alteration: one arm looked like it came straight from a sci-fi cyborg, along with an impossible-looking arm cannon. In fact, I could see no real arm underneath it, save for a rounded nub at the shoulder. Instead, deep in his real body, I could see the traces of the Push alteration: a ghostly metal skeleton and various imaginary cybernetics seemed attached to his body.
I didn’t even wait to let all of this sink in; I simply acted, letting instinct and focus take over. There was no time to figure this out rationally and get shot, no matter how much less the effect was to me than the rest of reality. I let my leap carry on, crashing full-body into the meaty cyborg.
Surprise and momentum were on my side as the tackle carried us both to the floor. There was a struggle and tangle of limbs; I pushed and pulled to try to position myself on top to try to immobilize him. I somehow managed to squirm around to be on top of the cyborg, mostly thanks to surprise, to which he instantly responded with a swing of his huge metal arm. This having been my third actual real fight ever, I didn’t see it coming.
Luckily, it passed through me like it was a ghost. Unlike Eric’s slap, there wasn’t even a real arm under the phantom robotics to strike me. I didn’t want to give him a chance to decide to try to shoot me; that would hurt if not kill me. I simply started raining punches down on my prone target. I tried to aim, in my own crude way, at the fleshier parts of his head and chest, away from the bones.
Even if those metal bones were not real to me, Eric’s face had taught me that there was still some kind of reality to them. I couldn’t afford to break any more knuckles. The man grunted in pain as his cheek was bruised and his lip was busted.
With a yowl of agony and effort, as I drew back another fist I prayed would knock him out or make him give up, he swung the cannon arm back around, the barrel angling for my head. I threw myself aside as a high-pitched electronic whine proceeded an explosion of fire and heat as another projectile burned a path in the air, blowing a hole through the ceiling above.
I rolled and began to scramble to my feet. I could hear behind me the same kind of sounds of motion with the addition of electronic motors whirring. As I pushed off the ground, I instinctively grabbed a hunk of debris with my old pitching arm. I turned and, hoping he wasn’t much faster than I was, spun up into a full-speed softball pitch. My luck was holding as I propelled the hunk of stone straight into the Pushed man’s chest, eliciting another grunt of pain and a loud cough.
I followed up that momentary distraction with one more wild punch, putting everything I had behind it, trying to recapture that sense of focus that had been starting to fade as the fight had carried on. It took every shred of willpower I had to push the danger out of my mind, the lingering pain in my shoulder, everything else, and just focus on that one punch. It worked.
There was again that shift in temporal perception as I threw every biochemical switch in my body and my nerves danced as my mind red-lined. My entire body moved in perfect harmony for that one swing. The man’s military training must have kicked in and he moved to protect his head ... with his cybernetic arm. My fist passed through it as if it didn’t exist and connected hard in the man’s nose. Blood spurted in slow motion as I felt cartilage crunch. As he fell back, I could see his eyes roll up in the back of his head as he fell unconscious.
I fell to my knees, my heart beating like a jackhammer, and my lungs burning from exertio
n. I forced myself to crawl over to the bloodied veteran and turned him over on his back. Agent Brooks had packed a few things he thought I might need in the hip bag I was wearing; I rummaged for a moment and pulled out a set of plastic zip-tie style handcuffs. It was bizarre to not be able to touch something, but to be able to tie something else around it, as I did with one loop of the tie-cuffs around the man’s cyborg arm. My heart was finally starting to get under control and I could finally hear both Brooks and Choi trying to shout for my attention.
“Quiet, quiet, please,” I pleaded to the air. “I’m OK, mostly. I got him.” I sat in the ruined apartment hallway and tried to finish getting myself under control.
“Well, Doc, I hate to be 'that guy', but you better get your ass out of there,” Duane noted. “More cops are finally on their way.”
“Do you need a pick-up? Medical attention?” Rachel asked. I could already hear activity on their end. Having no choice, I made myself stand back up, no matter the adrenaline shakes that were coming on.
“Yes to both,” I whispered as I started to make my way back to the stairs. Not five minutes ago, I felt like I was unstoppable. Now I was feeling all that agony and fatigue coming back tenfold. All I could think about as I made my way down the stairs as quick as I could was to wonder just how long I could keep this up, play-acting the hero.
Chapter 11 Ride
No matter what the reality was, it was true that no good deed goes unpunished. That’s what I thought as I hid, huddled up in a corner of a fire escape on the back side of a building a block away from Brook Heights. The fine men and women of the Atlanta Police Department were carefully combing through the alleys and streets below, looking for me. After all, no matter how many lives I had probably saved, I was, at least in the police’s eyes, just another Pushed vigilante.
On top of that, my shoulder wanted to stop working; the past fifteen minutes of running and evasion had worked the chunk of stone wedged into my flesh deeper and deeper. I was only lucky that the bad lighting in the alley was keeping me concealed. Another five minutes and my pursuers seemed to give up and head back towards their parked cars at the Heights.
“There’s a Push Battle near Georgia State,” Agent Brooks said in my ear. “Give another minute for the heat to finish backing off and we’ll pick you up.”
“Obviously, you’re going to have to settle for Duane’s EMT training and not a hospital stay,” Agent Choi added. “We have a train to catch in just a few hours.”
“Lovely,” was the only comment I could muster. One aspect so glossed over in most comic books is pain. Sure, there are plenty of grunts and yells and arghs, but it does not properly convey the real essence of the pain all those grievous wounds actually cause. Despite the pain, I realized as I waited there, deep down this felt like it was worth it. I exchanged literal blood, sweat, and tears for maybe two dozen lives. I couldn’t construct a rational argument against so cheap a transaction.
Fortunately for me, Brooks not only seemed well versed in medicine, but he had a gentle touch that did not match his hands, which seemed to be the size of ham hocks. In retrospect to my encounters with Eric, I came out of that encounter with a light touch. Duane had barely finished putting a dressing over the stitching when Rachel blew through the room, packing up equipment and clothes.
“I do apologize, Irene, but we don’t have any time to linger here,” she said. “We have about an hour to make it to the Amtrak station and you can imagine how horrible the roads are. Fortunately, we have a full cabin. You can rest up on the rails.”
We had tickets for the 6:32 pm train out of the station, the last available train before curfew closed down the streets. Atlanta traffic before the Whiteout was bad enough; her assessment was quite correct. It would be a miracle if we made the train at all.
Despite the rhythm of the clickty-clack of the railroad tracks underneath us, I simply could not fall asleep. I sat there, head up against the window of the Amtrak cabin, watching the darkened landscape flutter past, occasionally lit up by the lights of a nearby town or rail station. Agent Brooks was dozing lightly on one of the bunks, the evening edition of the New York Times open over his face. The headline stuck out in bold print: ‘EPIC RENEWS RALLY PLANS, PUSHED AND DC PREPARE FOR WORST’. Agent Choi was soldering loose connections in the communications equipment I would be wearing under my suit tomorrow. We both had steaming cups of coffee and a newly filled pot on the table between us.
I had to admit that Duane’s idea of an Amtrak ride was brilliant. The lines were still running at night, despite the curfew, and the security was far less restrictive than the airlines. It certainly didn’t hurt to have most of the amenities of home along the way. Without delays, the route guide stated the trip from Atlanta to Washington, DC would take right around twelve hours, so that would give all of us plenty of time to recuperate and rest in peace, on the move and away from any kind of observation. Of course, that was assuming we could actually make ourselves rest.
“Don’t mind him,” Rachel said, pointing an end of her soldering iron at the snoring black man. “He can sleep anywhere, through anything. I wish I could do that.”
“Amen,” I looked back towards the table and sipped at my coffee. “I’m too wired to sleep now. You’d think after all of that work today I’d be able to sleep like a baby.”
“Not after the three dinner orders you packed away. Hopefully our expense funds for this case hold out under your food bills.” She soldered one last wire, then set the hot iron in it’s holder. “There, all done.”
“I’m pretty sure I know why I keep doing that. It has to be from all the extra metabolic activity. Running, jumping, hitting stuff, taking a rock bullet in the shoulder, all that uses a lot of energy.”
“That makes some sense. What still does not add up to me is why you seem to be partially or completely immune to what the Pushed do.” From her jacket pocket, Rachel produced her ever-present notepad. “The first most obvious guess is that you’re Pushed. Evidence doesn’t support that, though. You aren’t obviously physically changed and, while you seem to stretching the bounds of human ability, your discovery of how some basic properties of the world have been altered accounts for that. "
"My next guess would be that it has something to do with your proximity to the initiation of the event. Maybe you were so close you picked up an excessive dose of those God particles and that concentration affected you in a different way than the others.”
“Interesting theory, but that doesn’t account for Eric.” I thought a moment, then added, “Well, it’s possible the difference could have to do with intent. After all, this was his rodeo.”
“Certainly possible.” Rachel sighed and picked up her coffee. “The real problem comes down to the fact that anything seems to be possible now. The changes are so fundamental; I’m not even sure exactly what it was like before. I imagine that as the days roll by, that will only get worse until we don’t even acknowledge that it was any different before the Whiteout.”
“I’m not going to let that happen.”
“We are certainly going to try, Doc,” Brooks’ gravely voice chimed in from under the newspaper. The man shifted onto his side. “You’re not doing this alone, remember?”
“I stand corrected,” I replied, looking back out into the night. I wasn’t going to be rude and note that, at least so far, I had been pretty much doing it on my own. Behind me, I could hear Agent Choi repacking equipment and closing cases.
“Oh, we forgot to mention the good news,” Rachel added as I heard her zipping up the garment bag with my suit in it. “You’re official now.”
“Official what?” Whatever it is, I probably didn’t want to know, but had to ask anyway.
“An official honest-to-God superhero, well, according to the media anyway. Your bit of heroics today made the papers and the internet. At least you’ll have solid credentials when you go to the rally tomorrow.”
I turned back toward Rachel, unable to suppress my look of concern.<
br />
“Oh hell. OK, what is it?”
“What is what?” Agent Choi replied. She looked confused at the question.
“What did they call me?” I explicitly asked. It was bound to be something cheesy or ridiculous or just plain stupid. Whatever it was, I sadly needed to know it, because that is what the Pushed would call me when we got to Washington.
“Well, that officer you got out of there said you were ‘indomitable in the face of danger’, so right now, the media has hereby christened you as ‘Indomitable’.”
Rachel slid over her smartphone with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s article on my appearance in all it’s digital glory. Well, I could think of far worse names they could have come up with. It didn’t matter anyway; this would be a very temporary situation. After a few minutes, I handed the phone back.
“It will have to do, I guess.” I shrugged helplessly, wincing at the still painful wound. At least, I told myself, it seemed to be properly descriptive.
It was getting near 2 am now. Agent Choi had finally succumbed to sleep, but I had too many thoughts racing through my head to sleep. I had no idea what to expect from this rally. I knew Eric wouldn’t back down from anything the government might do, but that didn’t mean any of the other Pushed who may attend would follow suit. There had to be some level heads out there that I could get through to.
Of course, this was assuming the government wouldn’t make any preemptive moves. It was like a combination of a civil rights march in 1960s Georgia with a Cold War nuclear standoff. The one thing I knew I had to do was, above all else, keep things from getting out of hand, even if it meant doing something with a high probability of suicide.
It was in the company of these pleasant thoughts that I felt the all-too-familiar crawl up my skin. It looked like we weren’t the only ones who saw Amtrak as convenient and discrete. The sensation grew stronger and stronger; I could hear footsteps down the hall. A moment later, the sound and the feeling were receding.
The Push Chronicles (Book 1): Indomitable Page 9
