The Twisted Future (Teen Superheroes Book 4)

by Darrell Pitt

  They were in a private cabin, lit by a single porthole. Sharla shone her torch around. Another door led to the bathroom, but this did not even contain a window.

  ‘There’s only one way out of here,’ she said, pointing to the window. It was barely big enough for an infant let alone a teenager. Brodie examined it closely before peering about the cabin. She upended a bed, breaking off a six-foot metal strut.

  ‘We might be able to solve this with a lever and some good old fashioned grunt,’ she said, setting to work on the window.

  Within minutes she had removed the casing. It took another half-an-hour to lever back enough of the bulkhead so that they could squeeze through. Now at the stern of the vessel, they were able to drop down a few feet onto the remains of a shattered building and continue their journey.

  The remainder of the day passed without incident. After everything that had happened, Chad expected bizarre creatures to attack them from every corner, but the streets were surprisingly quiet. Only the fog remained, swirling and moving like a living thing. Chad saw the outside of his helmet was fogging up from the murky substance. He tried cleaning it, but only seemed to make it worse.

  ‘Can someone help me out?’ he asked.

  Brodie cleaned it as he returned the favor.

  ‘This would’ve been more fun if we were applying sun tan lotion on a sun drenched beach,’ he said.

  ‘You wish,’ Brodie said, smiling. ‘Let’s stay focused.’

  ‘We’ll need to find a place to crash,’ Sharla said. ‘I know a building nearby.’

  Her timing was good. By the time they arrived at a brownstone a few streets away, the sky had turned a shade of murky brown; it was almost night. Sharla took them inside. An old spring mattress blocked the stairs. The girl pushed it aside and they climbed to a room on the second floor. It was surprisingly clean.

  ‘I’ve stayed here a few times,’ she explained. ‘We should be fine just as long as we stay quiet.’ She glared pointedly at Chad. ‘No shooting.’

  The night passed slowly. Chad found himself waking every few hours. It was impossible to sleep comfortably in the suits. He felt hot and sticky, as if he were sleeping inside a plastic bag. He was hungry too. They had eaten before leaving, but his stomach was rumbling loud enough to wake the dead.

  He heard the others breathing through the comm system. Sharla’s breathing was deep and rhythmical, Brodie’s shallow and faster.

  When he next opened his eyes he found Brodie shaking his shoulder.

  ‘Come on, sleeping beauty,’ she said. ‘Time to move.’

  They continued across the badlands, the fog dancing and tumbling around them. It was like being in an immense cave. Distance was impossible to gauge because there was no horizon. The only evidence of open space was the ever constant sun, a brown disk in the sky.

  By late morning Chad was starving. They hadn’t eaten for almost a day and a half.

  ‘Any chance of food?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ Sharla said. ‘You find a way to squeeze food through the filter and you can eat all you want.’

  Great, he thought. Starvation will kill me if the gas doesn’t.

  ‘We’re almost there,’ Sharla said an hour later. ‘I can see the wall from here.’

  Chad wasn’t sure how she saw anything in this murky mess, but within minutes a dark shape appeared. He felt a sense of immense relief; somehow they had survived this nightmare landscape.

  ‘Yay,’ he croaked. ‘Let’s party.’

  ‘There’s a subway tunnel ahead,’ Sharla said. ‘It’s a way into Manhattan.’

  They had started to descend the stairs when the girl stopped.

  ‘Damn,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a problem. I broke my torch back there and we’ll need light to find the cross-tunnel.’

  Chad thought for a moment. ‘I can provide light,’ he said. ‘All we need.’

  ‘But you can’t use your powers without removing your suit,’ Brodie pointed out.

  ‘What if I just take my glove off?’ he asked Sharla. ‘Just for a few minutes.’

  ‘There’s less fog down here,’ she said. ‘You might end up with some skin irritation, but it wouldn’t be permanent. Wait till we get further in though.’

  They continued to the bottom. The murky light was sufficient to break though the gloom as they climbed over the barriers onto the concourse. Finally, Sharla said, ‘Okay Chad,’ she said, ‘this is as far as we can get. We need light.’

  He carefully unzipped the glove. Flexing his hand, he immediately felt the strange fog twirling around his bare fingers.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s make this quick.’

  He created a small flame above his palm. It immediately illuminated their faces—and that of a man standing behind Brodie. The stranger wore no shirt. His skin stretched painfully over his rib. His eyes receded so far into his head that they were almost invisible. Below the sunken orbs, his cheeks were missing entirely, making his teeth look like rows of tiny tombstones.

  Before Chad could utter a warning, the stranger leaped onto Brodie and bit her shoulder.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Brodie screamed.

  Chad punched the man as hard as he could in the face. The stranger fell backwards and Chad followed up with a blast of fire. It struck him in the chest and he gave a single inarticulate cry before shuddering once and expiring on the spot. Creating a ring of fire, he illuminated the concourse. Empty. Chad examined Brodie’s wound. The bite had pierced her suit; blood seeped from the injury.

  ‘We have to get you out of here,’ he said to Brodie. ‘You need a tetanus shot and bandages.’

  Sharla was staring at Brodie with a troubled expression. ‘We’re almost in Manhattan,’ she said. ‘Let’s get moving.’

  She led them down to a platform, onto the tracks and continued along a tunnel, reaching a blockage where the ceiling had collapsed. Sharla knew the way well. She led them over the rubble to a metal ladder someone had placed there years before. At the top of the hole was an abandoned apartment.

  They stripped off their suits. Chad was relieved to be free of the sticky garments. He was a lather of sweat and he stunk of body odor. They all did. He examined Brodie’s shoulder. It had already filled with pus. Exchanging glances with Sharla, he saw she was strangely silent, staring at Brodie without speaking.

  ‘What?’ Chad demanded. ‘What aren’t you saying?’

  Sharla pursed her lips. ‘I’ve seen people bitten before by those things...’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And they don’t survive.’

  ‘What?’

  Brodie scrambled to her feet. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ she said, laughing nervously. ‘I feel fine.’

  ‘Maybe your powers will fight off the infection,’ Sharla said. ‘But every other person has died.’

  Chad asked, ‘Is there a doctor around here?’

  ‘A few blocks away.’

  They abandoned the suits and Sharla took them to a brownstone three blocks away. Sharla gave a coded knock at the door and it was eased open by an elderly woman with steel-grey hair.

  ‘This is Robin,’ Sharla said. ‘She will do what she can for Brodie.’

  ‘Are you leaving?’ Chad asked.

  ‘I have to get back to my own life,’ she said, briefly hugging them. ‘Good luck with your mission. I hope it goes well.’

  The old woman invited them into a living room on the ground floor, offering them seats, but she was already staring at Brodie’s shoulder.

  ‘What happened to you?’ she asked. ‘Have you been bitten?’

  They explained what had happened and the woman’s face fell. ‘Sharla should have explained to you,’ she said. ‘This is extremely serious.’

  ‘She said no-one survived this sort of bite,’ Chad said. The words sounded foreign to him even as he said them. It meant Brodie could die, but that was ridiculous. Brodie couldn’t die. She was Brodie. He added, ‘Brodie’s been modified,’ he said. ‘She’s got three ti
mes normal strength and speed. She’ll be okay. Right?’

  ‘Her powers will help,’ Robin said, examining the wound. ‘The people who live in the badlands have mutated. I’m not even sure they’re still human. I’ll clean and dress the wound and give you some antibiotics.’

  Robin didn’t say anything after that. She worked on Brodie’s shoulder, wiping away the pus and stitching the bite marks closed. Finally, she gave Brodie some medication and told her to rest.

  ‘We’ll see how you are in a few hours,’ she said.

  ‘I feel sleepy,’ Brodie said. ‘Is that the pills?’

  ‘Your body is fighting the infection,’ Robin said, settling Brodie into a bed in the next room. Within seconds, she was asleep and Robin had returned to Chad. ‘We’ll monitor her condition,’ she said.

  ‘And if she worsens?’

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone survive a bite from one of those creatures,’ she said. ‘I think you need to prepare yourself for the worst. Your friend might die.’

  Your friend might die. The words rang in Chad’s head. Your friend might die.

  Exhausted, he settled into a chair as Robin left the room. He had hardly slept the previous night and barely eaten. Now he had to work out what to do about Brodie. If her condition worsened...

  The next thing he knew, Robin was shaking his arm. He blinked, looking about in confusion. Somehow, he had fallen asleep, slumped in the chair. ‘Brodie,’ he said. ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘I’m afraid she’s very unwell,’ Robin said. ‘You’d better come.’

  He followed Robin to the surgery where Brodie now lay on a surgical bed with her shoulder bandaged. Her eyes were shut, but they eased open when Chad spoke her name.

  ‘I’m very tired,’ she said. ‘Let me go back to sleep.’

  Robin removed the bandage from her shoulder and Chad drew in his breath. The wound was severely inflamed. It had started to turn black. The cuts in her flesh had reopened and were seeping more pus.

  The doctor drew Chad to one side. ‘The antibiotics have not worked,’ she said. ‘She may only have a few hours.’

  ‘That ridiculous!’ he snapped. ‘There must be something we can do!’

  Robin thought. ‘There is a Doctor by the name of Steven Bryce in Berkeley Heights,’ she said. ‘He has some powerful medicines, far stronger than anything I have.’

  ‘What’s the address?’

  She gave him the details. The suburb lay several miles west of Manhattan. Robin gripped his arm. ‘But you’ll never get there in time,’ she said. ‘It’s a full day’s walk.’

  Chad nodded. An idea was forming in his mind, but he didn’t like it. He asked Robin about the air defenses over the city, but she just repeated what Old Axel had told them: fighter craft attacked unauthorized vessels.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked him.

  ‘I’m thinking about flying,’ Chad said. ‘Except I might end up killing us both.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ‘You can fly?’ Robin’s face brightened immediately. ‘That’s fantastic. You might—’

  ‘No,’ he said, cutting her short. ‘That’s the problem. I can’t fly. Not really.’

  Doctor Michaels, a scientist at the Agency, had told him he could use his powers to fly. By creating a raft of superheated air, he could ride it through the sky like a surfboard. The scientist had offered to work with him, but the idea had terrified Chad.

  Not that he would have admitted that fear to anyone. He was The Chad which meant he didn’t show fear. They had been living in Las Vegas at the time and he had gone out into the desert to practice, eventually gaining proficiency at flying short distances. He had quickly found the flying to be the easy part—the landings were harder. More than once, he had misjudged the distance between himself and the ground and had crashed hard enough to bruise his body—and his pride.

  So he had given up on the idea, driving it completely from his mind.

  Until now.

  Because now Brodie would die unless he flew her to this doctor.

  He went onto the roof of Robin’s house and stared at the sky. It’s always so easy for Axel, he thought. He flies as if he’s got wings. Chad had always felt like a tightrope walker. One wrong move and he would hurtle to the ground.

  The memories were so terrifying he had even suffered nightmares, waking in the dead of night, dripping sweat. The one consolation as he lay in the dark was the knowledge he would never need to fly again.

  He went downstairs to Robin’s surgery. ‘How long has she got?’ he asked. ‘To live, I mean.’

  ‘A few hours,’ Robin said. ‘Maybe not that long.’ She stared into his face. ‘I can understand your fear.’

  ‘I’m not afraid—’ He stopped. ‘No, I am afraid. I’m terrified. I might fall from the sky. I might drop Brodie by accident. Anything could happen.’

  ‘You shouldn’t do it then,’ Robin said, gently. ‘It sounds like your chances of succeeding are slim.’

  ‘Slim?’ He laughed bitterly. ‘They’re almost zero.’

  Robin continued to speak, but Chad was staring at Brodie’s face. No-one would ever know if he did nothing. No-one knew about his experiments in the desert. It would be a secret he could keep forever.

  Except he would know and that was enough.

  He had a second secret too, one he had hardly dared to acknowledge himself. He thought he was in love with Brodie. He wasn’t sure, and it had never been a line of thinking he wanted to pursue. She was Axel’s girlfriend, after all, and they loved each other and that was that.

  But sometimes Chad wondered how life would be if she were not dating Axel. If she had never dated Axel, then everything would have been completely different. She might even have been with him from the very beginning.

  He swallowed. No matter who she was dating, he would not let her die. Never. Picking her up, she stirred groggily in his arms. Dark rings had formed around her eyes. ‘Are we at the beach?’ she asked. ‘I want to go swimming again.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re not well. I’m taking you to a doctor.’

  He carried her to the roof, his hands shaking, as a paralyzing fear gripped his chest. This was crazy! They would both get killed! But what sort of man would he be if he didn’t try?

  I’m The Chad! he thought. I’m a superhero!

  Now he had to act like one.

  Robin was at his elbow. ‘Evolution gave us fear as an advantage,’ she said. ‘Run or fight. Changing your view of fear can change your feelings.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he grunted.

  Chad formed a raft of heat with his mind. Robin stepped back as he made it superhot. Then he ran forward with Brodie in his arms and leapt onto it. For one horrifying moment he started to sink into it, but then he remembered the advice of Doctor Michaels.

  You need to create a cushion of cold directly above the heated layer to protect yourself.

  So he did this and the heat immediately subsided. He focused on projecting the raft forward and he started across the roof. Robin called out good luck, but he didn’t reply. The raft headed over the edge of the roof and they started to drop.

  For one terrifying second he thought he would plunge to the street below. Then he refocused again on the raft, making it more powerful, and it lifted him again. Keep moving forward, he told himself. Onwards and upwards. Within seconds he was high above Manhattan.

  He was frightened—his whole body shook like a jellyfish—but he was alive. Sweat was dancing a jig down his back. His hair was plastered to his head. This was working. Somehow. His first goal was to aim for New Jersey. Some of its distinctive landmarks were visible in the distance. If everything went well, he might have Brodie at the doctor’s within the hour.

  Then he spotted something from the corner of his eye.

  ‘Oh no,’ he muttered.

  A small, black dot was slicing across the horizon, growing larger by the second.

  ‘I want to go to the beach,’ Brodie said. ‘I need to
swim...’

  Chad increased his speed and was soon speeding over the city buildings. Unfortunately the object in the sky had adjusted direction towards him and had increased velocity. It was a guided missile.

  ‘Where’s the beach?’ Brodie murmured.

  Chad felt his arms shaking worse than ever. He needed to land—and quickly—except he was too high up. Getting to the ground would take over a minute. And what if the missile followed them all the way down?

  He had to go faster. He increased speed again, but the missile was still heading straight towards him. It was less than a mile away. Now only a thousand feet. He only had seconds to act so now he diverted his attention, creating a solid sheet of ice in mid air.

  As long as the missile stuck it—

  The missile slammed into the sheet and exploded. The forward impact from the shrapnel rained towards Chad and Brodie. He threw up a second ice shield to protect them.

  Chad almost laughed out loud. We’re alive! Not a single piece of the missile had hit them. He had never felt so elated in his life.

  Then his flying raft evaporated and they began falling earthward.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Night had fallen across the island. Dan sat huddled in the Liber8tor galley nursing a cup of hot chocolate. He had returned to the ship after Henry had gone missing. He did not believe the boy was in immediate danger. He had, after all, survived on the island for some time; he must know a hundred hiding places. Dan was more concerned about himself and the ship.

  ‘Have you picked up any life forms?’ he asked Ferdy.

  ‘The Liber8tor senses have not,’ Ferdy said. ‘It would seem that whatever you heard in the jungle does not show up on our senses.’

  Great, Dan thought. Just what I needed.

  ‘Are the weapons systems working?’ he asked.

  ‘They are operating at normal levels.’

  ‘So we have missiles...’

  ‘Missiles and laser systems,’ Ferdy said. ‘However, there is nothing specifically designed for monsters.’