“Greetings and salutations, my friends!” Cue applause, again quieted. “You know who I am, I have tried to meet as many of you as I can in person, but for those that I have not, let me introduce myself. I am called Epic and I have gathered you here today, in our beloved nation’s capitol, to let our voices combine together and reassure everyone, here in the United States and abroad, that we are not to be feared.” Another cheer. “We are not to be demonized.” Louder this time. “We are men and women, just like all of those unchanged by this bizarre Whiteout, and we ask only for those same rights and liberties!”
I had to cap my ears for a moment; there were too many unnatural voices for my sensitive ears to handle.
“Even though what we ask is no different than what every man and woman is owed by birth, we offer something in exchange for these things! A gift to every man, woman, and child alive. A gift of a better, safer tomorrow. Between us, we have the power to cure the incurable, make fertile what is barren, make the poor rich, and stop the crimes man wages upon man.” Another huge roar; they were eating this up like candy.
“However, I also come to you, my friends, with a message of warning, a message of caution.” The cheers died down to questioning murmurs.
“There are those men and women who fear us. Oh yes, they do. Not because they fear our powers or our appearances, they fear the change we bring. They don’t want man to have hope.” He pointed towards the Capitol. “Even some of the very men and women we elected to lead us hold these fears. They don’t want power to go back to the man in the streets. They don’t want them to be happy. That fear is their power and, believe me, they will cling to it no matter what.” I was starting to have a spark of hope again. I could tell from the mixed reactions that some people weren’t quite ready to buy this part of Eric’s vision.
“What I say is that we must be united. Only together can we push back against the evils in this world: the Pushcrooks, the disease, the filth, and the corrupt power brokers who would try to stop our glorious purpose! If that means we must fight our own government, we must. Where ever we find evil, we must destroy it.” He pointed out towards the crowd, that unnatural charisma making me feel as if he was pointing personally right at me.
“I ask this: Will each of you do your part? Will you join with me and your brothers and sisters,” he spread his arms towards those on both sides of him,“ and form a great crusade for justice?”
There were a lot of cheers. There were a lot of waving arms and people screaming for attention. However, there were those who weren’t. Some talked among themselves, some were simply silent. A few even started to make their way out of the crowd. This was it, this was my shot. I pushed through the curtain and raised the bullhorn, cranked to maximum volume.
“Hold on, people,” I said, the bullhorn carrying my voice wide. “There’s more than one side to this story and you deserve to hear it!”
I let the amplified shout reverberate for a moment. Eric’s hands were splintering the sides of his podium. Extinguisher looked very uneasy, but the Human Tank and Medusa flashed me thumbs up. Hexagon and Mind’s Eye tried to look impassive. The crowd was flush with conversation. No one had tried to kill me yet, so I continued, walking towards the stage.
“Don’t get me wrong, everything that Epic just told you at the start is great. I couldn’t have said it better. But ...” I paused for effect, hopping up on the stage. Off the bullhorn, I glanced at Eric. “May I?” There was a moment where I thought he would just try to rip my head off, but the realization he was being live broadcast worldwide made him check his motion. He drifted back. “Thank you!” I moved to the podium in his place.
“But one thing he has got all wrong is that we need to stand against the people in power.” There were a fair number of boos at that, but not as many as I thought there would be. I pressed on. “Are some of them corrupt? Sure. Should some of them deserve to be stood against? Yes. But there’s a right way and a wrong way. This country was founded on the idea that we could make a better system than the one we revolted against. A system where the common man could enact change and where power came from the ground up.” I was starting to attract some cheers among the boos.
“Now tell me, people, if we follow one man’s lead, no matter who that man is, without voting, without representation, what is that?” Thank God for civics teachers, because quite a few people actually yelled back. “That’s right! That’s a monarchy. That’s tyranny. That’s the rule of the strongest man over his lessers.” I pointed at Eric. “No offense, Epic, but might does not make right. Even the best man in the world can’t be left to call the shots without a system.”
Eric tried his best to hide his growing anger, but I could see his real face. I wondered if it was smart to push him the rest of the way, to expose his underlying darkness here and now. It could break his monopoly on the ear of the Pushed. It could also cause the government to twitch the wrong way and send in troops.
“Epic is one of those great men, friends. I’m not asking you not to listen or not to do what you think is right.” I took a deep breath and stamped on my urge to reveal everything, right here and now. As we had all so often repeated these past few days, lives were at stake. “All I ask is that you think about what is right and what is best for you and the world. What will people be more afraid of? Us, as we are, working in the way we think is best to help our fellow man, or united in one giant monolithic crusade? I know what I would be more afraid of.” I looked out over the crowd. “Remember, right now, all eyes are on us. Choose wisely.”
There was no roaring applause or jubilant cheers. What there was, though, was talk. Debate. It swelled through the crowd, every Push hero talking to his fellows, trying to decide what was the best way to go. In other words, they were acting like perfectly rational people, for all the world’s governments to see.
I stepped back from the podium. I hadn’t done what I wanted to do, but maybe I had done something far better. I could feel Eric’s presence looming behind me. As I turned to face him eye-to-eye, I felt a sudden sickening wave ripple through my body, as if the number of Pushed near me had suddenly doubled. Appropriate, because that is exactly what happened. I caught the brilliant white flash as I hunched over, trying to keep my insides from vomiting out on the stage.
Above the Mall was a small army of figures, as vast and varied an array as the Pushed that filled the National Mall. At their lead, directly over our heads, was a figured, garbed in black, with a billowing white cloak. I could see through his outer superhuman skin, which radiated as much power as Epic’s did. It was Gerald Schuller, the man who had murdered Eric’s parents. I could only think, from the twisted look in his eyes, that he was no longer on his medication.
“If everyone is allowed to speak their mind, then we want our turn,” he bellowed, so loud that his voice vibrated glass and set off car alarms. “Or are criminals no longer citizens in this country?”
My mind finished processing what it was seeing. It was really simple physics. For every reaction, there is an equal and opposite reaction. I didn’t know who launched themselves at who first but what I did know, in a second of total clarity, that for all my efforts, the match had been lit and the powder keg was going off.
Chapter 17 Schuller
Eric’s primal scream was blood-curdling as he launched himself into the sky. When only days before he had sworn that he had no interest in Schuller’s life, it was readily apparent that murder was etched on his true face. Gerald braced himself in the sky and, like two glowing white meteors, they collided.
The impact could only be likened to a bomb going off; the resultant shockwave knocked a hole in the brawling superhumans and pierced a column in the gathering clouds over head. Even at the ground, as I tried to force down the nausea rippling through my body, people were scattered, tents blown down, and anything not nailed down was thrown about. I had no time to catch a hold of anything and was flung back and down, shoved down onto the stage floor.
I lay there, stu
nned. Not from the impact, painful as it was, it was the realization that this wouldn’t just be a war, it would be the destruction of this entire city, if not more. This first opening blow had already injured who knows how many bystanders and it was, essentially, a dud.
I tried to force my mind to work, to think. There had to be a way to stop this. I couldn’t accept the possibility of failure now. As my mind raced, two scaly hands pulled me to my feet as the sky was suddenly obscured by a dome of phantasmal ice. It was like the old notion of hiding under your desk when the nuclear bomb dropped.
“Indy, you ok?” Medusa hissed. “Thisss issn’t the besst time to be sssitting down.” The five Push heroes had instinctively dropped into a defensive circle; already there were cracks and holes starting to form in the ice dome from multiple sides. I let myself get set to my feet. There was a foreign pressure in my brain, the urge to fight, no matter the costs or consequences. A chemical reaction of hero and villain with an explosive result, but the Whiteout-spawned desires in me craved it. I could tell from the tense postures of my friends that they were succumbing to it already.
“Indomitable, in case we don’t make it out of this alive,” Mind’s Eye coolly recounted as the ice dome finished it’s inevitable collapse around us, “Agent Brooks is following the right leads. He wanted me to send his thanks for reminding him of his duty.”
I couldn’t help but give an annoyed glance. While the information was nice to know, it wasn’t so important that breath had to be wasted on it with our lives in peril. It reminded me of an awkward plot exposition from a comic book. I instantly realized that it was that very thing. I didn’t have any more time to consider that, however, as what protection we had was now gone and Pushcrooks plowed through the remains of melting ice towards us.
Around me, all five of my friends, even Medusa, surged forward as if with one purpose. Considering the Whiteout and Mind’s Eye’s telepathic powers, they almost certainly had one purpose. Flame met ice, unnatural energies lanced into each other, thunder and lightning erupted from clear skies, and the air seemed alive with the reverberating shockwaves of inhuman might pitted against its equal.
Above us, I could hear Eric’s frenzied cries and Schuller’s laughter. The two deific figures spiraled and danced around each other, burning white trails into the trembling skies. Where the two trails crossed, there was another sky-splitting impact. Where they split, the intervening space was peppered with streaks of pure energy, gold versus crimson, lancing between the would-be savior and the untreated schizophrenic. It was the literal meeting of the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object. Could they even be stopped before that one fight lay waste to the area?
Every blast that went stray seemed to shave a section off of a building or shatter a roadway; each collision released another glass-shattering shockwave. It was almost too much for my senses to take, aggravated by the unleashing of so much unreality all at once. I might have collapsed into a fetal position if not for two things.
First, a deep overriding spark in my brain kept pushing and telling myself, over and over, that I might be the only real chance to stop this before everyone in this city was dead, whether be their own hands or by the U.S. military. I had no doubt that the tanks, planes, and soldiers were already coming. Second, my self-preservation instincts suddenly kicked in, forcing my body to move, throwing myself backwards as the wooden floor was splintered from below.
Shards of wood and rock sprayed out as a grimy figure shot up from the hole in the stage and slammed down in front of me. Before I could even think to trigger it myself, the surge of untapped potential rushed through me once again. Everything from the combatants and friends all around me to the spray of debris itself turned sluggish as my perceptions shifted into overdrive.
The figure approaching me was imposing, dressed in a miner’s overalls, and covered in a fine cloud of what I assumed was coal dust. His outer shell was powerful, intimidating, and gruesome, as it appeared to be a walking corpse, whipping about an unfortunately quite real pickaxe. Under that shell was a wild-eyed man, almost the spitting image of what surrounded him, save for being a bit smaller and only somewhat more alive. There was a large shard of machinery from some industrial accident pierced through his chest. He swung the pickaxe in a mighty arc as I gaped, the air screaming from the speed of its movement.
“Just run away,” the living dead miner growled. “I’ll kill ya if ya don’t!” Instincts took over as the pick lashed out and my accelerated reflexes forced me into a back flip. Surprisingly, I landed it neatly, sticking a three point landing. I didn’t want to get bogged down in a pointless fight, not to mention possibly kill this man who was already practically in the grave as it was. When the Whiteout ended … I couldn’t afford to think about the consequences right then.
“Look, I don’t want to hurt you,” I warned, edging back slowly. Another step and I would be stepping into the blast radius of where Extinguisher and that same flame bodied man from Atlanta were blasting away at each other. “I can see you’re hurt; maybe I can help you.”
The miner arrested his next swing, letting out a cloud of coal dust with every breath. His inner haunted face looked shocked, then I could see it. The mental strings being pulled, the look was becoming disgustingly familiar to me.
“I’m dead!” he bellowed, almost popping my eardrums. “You can’t help dead!” His Whiteout-fueled rage made him rush at me, belching forth a violent hail of coal shards and dust. I instinctively shielded my face, squinting to keep an eye on the behemoth’s movements. While most of the particles were phantom bits of unreality, there was enough real coal dust there to obscure his movements. So much so that I wondered what would happen if there was a spark. Yes, I thought to myself, that might work.
I turned, letting my overclocked mind go to work, calculating the trajectory of my jump and the exact location of Extinguisher and his fiery dance partner. Everything seemed to slow down even more as I felt my body tense and explode into action. I thought I would begin to adjust to this, but even now, I couldn’t help but marvel as everything moved in perfect synch.
I dove forward and to one side, just close enough to the firefighter to grab him by the waist. Momentum carried us forward and down, just as the corpse-like miner burst through his own cloud of coal and the living flame let loose another flamethrower-like gout. There was an intense rush of heat as the coal dust both in the air and seemingly impregnated in every pore of the walking corpse’s phantom shell ignited. The pitiful roar echoed out as Extinguisher and I hit and rolled on the barely-standing remnants of the stage.
I wound up staddled on top of the firefighter. I couldn't help but flash an impish grin at him before stealing a glance over my shoulder. With some relief, I saw that the burst of flame and burning dust seemed to only daze and stun the miner. His true self seemed unhurt, at least from the flames.
Extinguisher was already trying to squirm free and get back into the brawl while, behind me, I could feel an approaching wall of heat. I felt another suicidal idea come on, but time was running out. Risks would have to be taken. Besides, there was no fear in me at that moment; it had been written out of my biochemical lexicon.
“You have to stop fighting,” I commanded, looking down at Extinguisher. “If you don’t, if we don’t, the full force of the U.S. military will wipe everyone here off the damn map.” Wood started to crackle and the ends of my hair start to curl from the heat. I had seconds before we would be made into barbeque, but I had to impress this on him and the four people he was certainly mind-linked to before we were engulfed again in the heat of battle.
“Get off me, Indy,” Extinguisher pleaded. “He’s going to kill you!” He struggled in vain. I knew he was trying to chill me off, but couldn’t. We already knew who was stronger when I was at my peak performance. I grabbed his head with both hands, his shoulders pinned under my knees, and stared hard into his eyes. There was a spark there, as we looked eye-to-eye, but I ignored it.
“You five
have got to seal this area. Ice, psychic mindwaves, piled cars, whatever. Contain the battle, save the civilians outside of the Mall.” My altered perceptions caught the first lashes of flame start to shoot towards my head. I could only hope that my strange immunity would let me stand it long enough to get this through. “Dammit, lives are at stake.”
I could only hope that key phrase, one that had cut through to the heart of every one of my five friends, would be enough this time. That’s when my head was engulfed in unnatural fire.
It hurt. Nowhere near as bad as it should have, certainly. There was some real flames mixed with the unreal ones and the smell of the ends of my hair catching was putrid. The pain of the burns was already being registered and cut off. If I was not going to die right now, my brain knew I need full command of my faculties. I only hoped my message managed to resonate in my friends’ heads as I threw myself away from the flames.
It was a simple plan, really. Make one last ditch effort to show that the Pushed were still human by making them defend their fellow man. If one group of them started, hopefully it would catch on. If enough stopped continuing the violence to try to abate it, maybe the government would take notice and call off the certain death that had to be approaching on metal wings. I could already pick up the sounds of gunfire pierce through the echoes of inhuman combat; the police or military must have been moving in on the ground.
It was out of my hands now. I had more immediate concerns, like saving my own life. The fiery being before me swiveled its amorphous torso to face me; through the flames I could see the inner shape of an irate youth, covered in Nazi-themed tattoos. My sudden roll had saved me from severe burns but I calculated my prospects of withstanding another concentrated burst of that fire, no matter how unreal it was, as being very bad indeed. At least this guy I wouldn’t feel too bad about hurting. I waited, feigning flash blindness, until he had focused entirely on me. The waving lines of fire that passed for his arms seemed to pull in then violently explode into a crackling ball of flames.
The Push Chronicles (Book 1): Indomitable Page 15
