First Team

by Robbie MacNiven

  The memories flowed as he picked his way along the path, in no hurry. The last few years before he’d left for the Institute had seen the activities of the neighborhood’s children – now teens – shift from playfighting and forest huts to skipping school and late-night parties. Vic remembered sneaking out of class early to meet up with his first boyfriend, Sam. They’d talked for hours, exploring parts of the forest they’d never dared venture into as kids. He’d stolen his first kiss outside an old, rusting corrugated shack they’d discovered half buried in the undergrowth. He’d been sure that day that they’d be together forever. Of course, it had all fallen apart when Sam’s parents had moved out of state. The first of many life lessons Vic had been required to learn.

  He slipped between some foliage and stopped, looking up. His meandering progress had brought him to a mighty black oak, dominating a small clearing in the thicket. Its boughs stretched overhead like some ancient, primordial forest deity, imperious and grand. He approached it with a solemn tread, still gazing up into its foliage.

  At the pinnacle of the trunk, where it split off into two great branches, a small wooden tree hut lay, lit by a ray of sunlight breaking through the canopy above. It looked almost a part of the tree itself now, its rough-hewn wooden walls and roof darkened by age, the green paint that had once coated it little more than flaking patches. The door, leading out onto a small wooden platform nestled between the tree’s arms, lay crooked and ajar, the interior hidden by the branches overhanging part of it.

  There was no obvious means of reaching the treehouse, no rope ladder or posts nailed into the trunk’s bark. That was all part of the trick. Vic paused briefly amidst the tangle of roots at the tree’s base, gazing up. How many times had he stood here down the years, contemplating his route up the craggy bark?

  When his father had first built the treehouse, scaling his way up to it had seemed like a mammoth task, one that had filled him with equal parts anxiety and excitement. The oak had appeared fierce and towering, an unassailable fortress tower. Now it had a more venerable air to it, still imposing, but rugged and weighted down by the years spent overseeing the surrounding woodland. Its stout trunk no longer issued a challenge to him.

  He extended a hand and placed it on the bark, resting it there for a moment before tensing it, feeling the microscopic setae which covered his hand bristle. It took a slight rotating motion to lock them with the rough surface. Once it was done though, his hand was stuck there, fixed in place until he rotated it back again.

  He set his other palm on the trunk and did the same, starting to climb. It had once taken long minutes of poise and concentration – including battling with his locked-on hands and feet as he tried to detach them one at a time – before he’d been able to clamber all the way up to the treehouse. Now he was able to do it in seconds, scaling the oak’s flank with a lithe, practiced ease. He alighted upon the board outside the treehouse door, crouched on his haunches, tongue flicking out to taste the air. He was alone. The treehouse stood long abandoned.

  He peered inside, having to stoop to enter. The plyboard interior consisted of nothing more than a coiled rope ladder, which he tested briefly, discovering it to be still intact, as well as two small chairs and a cracked old leather trunk. There were drawn images and posters still pinned to the walls, though they were faded beyond recognition. At some point a bird had clearly decided to make its nest and raise a family inside – the floor was littered with twigs, broken eggshells, feathers and stale droppings. One of the chairs was on its side, and there was a gap in the corner of the room where one of the floorboards had sagged and fallen away, exposing the forest floor below.

  He stepped fully inside, going slowly as the floorboards creaked underfoot. A part of him was surprised the little structure was still standing. It smelled damp and stale, and the plyboard was showing signs of decay. Still, it wasn’t so far removed from how it had been in its prime. He still remembered his excitement when Dan had taken him out to see it for the first time, all freshly painted and clean. When Vic had initially asked for it to be built atop the old oak his father had claimed it was impossible, that it would be too precarious. That, Vic had learned, was just Dan’s way of distracting him while his father undertook the arduous task of designing and building a treehouse that could sit safely amidst the old boughs. When Dan had revealed it to him months later, Vic had been unable to contain his delight, whooping and scrambling up the tree’s flank. They’d decorated the floor with one of Martha’s old rugs and filled the trunk with toys and the worthless woodland detritus children were wont to treasure – nuts, acorns, particularly large leaves, painted rocks, the tiny, fragile skull of a bird. The treehouse had been the gang hut and gathering place for Vic and half a dozen of his friends for years, the scene of endless amounts of childhood laughter, angst and drama. In his excitement he’d declared it his very own X-Mansion, the headquarters of a new school for mutant heroes and their human allies.

  He moved over to the trunk, undoing its rusty latch and lifting it carefully. It was empty, bar a couple of spiders that fled at his sudden intrusion. He gazed down into the cobwebbed interior, wondering whether Dan had come and cleaned it out at some point. He suppressed an unexpected pang of sorrow at the idea of the junk he and his friends had once carefully hoarded being thrown away.

  But maybe not all of it. He noticed something small lying in the trunk’s corner, almost lost in a rip in the lining fabric. He picked it up, blowing off the cobwebs clinging to it – a little plastic toy, a nondescript dinosaur, probably a toymaker’s approximation of a Tyrannosaurus rex. Vic remembered being distraught when he’d thought he had lost it years ago. Funny that it should turn up now, after so much time.

  He put the toy in his hoodie pocket and half turned, having to balance precariously in order to not trip on the fallen chair. The discovery of the lone prehistoric reptile had awakened another memory. Crouching down, he gently swept aside the litter covering the floor, exposing the boards at the center of the hut. Sure enough, he found a small rectangle cut into the timber. Extending a claw, he hooked it in underneath the space and raised the concealed trapdoor. He smiled as he saw what lay beneath.

  It was a little treasure hole, secreted under the floorboards and resting directly against the bark of the oak itself. Once hidden by the treehouse rug, it contained what Vic and the others had called the “emergency supplies.” Cans of beans, fruits and vegetables, bags of nuts and jerky, chocolate and granola bars, a few empty water bottles, all scrounged from the neighborhood’s kitchens over the space of a few years. Whoever had emptied the trunk had either forgotten about, or never discovered, the supplies, because the hole was still fully stocked. The sight of it made Vic smile. Just what catastrophe or prolonged siege they had been preparing for none of the gang had ever really considered, but they sure had been ready for it.

  He lowered the trap door and stepped out of the treehouse, back onto the platform outside. The forest was spread out beneath him, beams of sunshine lancing down through the canopy in half a dozen places, driving out the last of the sultry morning. Insects danced and buzzed in the shafts of light, and he saw a rabbit scamper through the undergrowth near the oak’s roots. The woodpecker he’d heard yesterday was back at work, its industrious chattering echoing faintly through the forest.

  He sat down on the platform with his legs dangling into space, his thoughts lost in the moment. The shades of his past had been all around him ever since he had set foot back in Fairbury. They were happy memories, for the most part, but he couldn’t help but view them differently now that he had a wider perspective. He’d come back partly to escape his troubles and partly to reassure himself that his family and his home were safe, untouched by the darkness that seemed to be rising up everywhere else.

  What he’d found should have reassured him, but he’d realized it had left him with more uncertainties, more questions. People changed, even if sometimes the places they called
home didn’t. The fact that the world’s troubles seemed to have fallen short of Fairbury didn’t mean they weren’t still happening. The combination of guilt and anger was still at the back of his mind, eating at him, suppressed but not banished by the tranquility of his surroundings.

  He sat for what seemed like a long time, trying to set his emotions in order. Eventually a sound intruded, playing on his subconscious until it had pushed its way to the front of his busy thoughts. It echoed faintly through the greenery around him, distant but persistent. He cocked his head to one side, listening.

  It sounded a lot like sirens.

  A sense of foreboding began to creep over him. He darted back down the oak’s trunk, dropping to the forest floor from halfway up and pausing to listen again. Down in the undergrowth it was even fainter, but it was definitely still there. If it had been an emergency vehicle just passing along the lane the sound would have faded by now. Whatever was emitting the noise, it was stationary.

  Vic found the track leading back to the house. He began to run.

  Chapter Seven

  Vic raced through the undergrowth, his heart pounding. He didn’t dare slow down to let his thoughts catch up. He needed to know that he’d been hearing things, or that he was just mistaken. He had to make sure that his imagination had been playing tricks on him, not that something terrible had happened. Not here, not now.

  He burst through the undergrowth and reached the fence outside his backyard. The sound of sirens had cut off at some point while he’d been running, but he could now hear shouting coming from the front of the house.

  He found the gate to the yard locked. For a second, he almost panicked. His parents knew he’d gone out into the forest. Why would they have locked the gate after him? He could’ve scaled the wall in a heartbeat, but he thought better of it.

  Stay calm. Keep it together. He might have dazed out during a few history lessons, but he’d always been sharp in the combat bouts and situational training. A succession of teachers – Wolverine and Karma foremost among them – had commended him for a level head and an ability to solve problems under pressure. He wasn’t going to forget all that now, when it counted.

  He sprinted round the side of the yard, then carried on past Mr McTeal’s before turning right onto the lane. If he’d gone immediately around his own home he would have emerged in the front yard and presumably come out right in the midst of whatever was going on there. That didn’t seem wise.

  He dashed past McTeal’s to find the leafy street beyond packed full. Half a dozen vehicles, three of them trucks and three police cars, were parked up haphazardly at the side of the lane, while a small crowd had gathered outside the Borkowski front yard. There were people from the neighborhood – Vic recognized the Rasheeds, Mr McTeal, the Carters, and Mr Sloan – along with three police officers all outside the low front fence. Their attention was focused on the yard, where another eight figures had taken over the front lawn.

  Dread filled Vic the moment he saw them. They were unmistakable in their black robes and ugly silver grotesques, the white cross-and-circle emblazoned on their breasts. Purifiers. Even worse, they were heavily armed. A few wore protective plates over their chests and shoulders, and six carried rifles, a mix of AR-15s and M16s, pointed at the sky but threatening all the same. The remaining two bore lit torches, the blazing tops giving off dirty black smoke.

  They’d ranged themselves across the lawn. The front door to Vic’s home had been kicked open. A police sergeant, undoubtedly more used to busting kids with dope than dealing with an impromptu cultist riot, was remonstrating loudly with the masked invaders, but none of them spoke or moved. Both his colleagues had their hands on their sidearms, but hadn’t drawn them, clearly not wanting to risk an escalation. As Vic took in the scene, the sergeant turned his attention to the crowd, bellowing angrily at them to disperse. None of them moved.

  Mrs Rasheed began to shout back at the officer. “Are you insane! Are you just going to stand there while these madmen ransack our neighbors?”

  This couldn’t be happening. Why were the Purifiers here, in rural Illinois? How had they found him? Had he led them here? Had they picked him up on the road from the Institute, followed him ever since?

  Vic stood, frozen between his desire to confront the people invading his home and the understanding that a head-on assault was rarely a wise strategy. He’d already considered stripping off and going full chameleon but didn’t want to duck back up the sidetrack for fear of being spotted. Where were his parents? He cast a look around the lane, forcing himself to remember his tactical training. The Purifiers appeared to have arrived in a pair of rusty trucks painted with their uncompromising symbol, the third vehicle looked like an old prison transport. Its rear container was made of blocky steel and it had two small windows with bars covering them. The vehicles were being guarded on the roadside by several more armed Purifiers, with still more sitting behind the wheels, the engines idling – it looked as though they weren’t intending to stay for long.

  Vic couldn’t back off now. He checked his pocket and cursed silently, remembering that he’d left his phone charging in his room the night before. He hadn’t even answered Cipher’s message before he’d fallen asleep. Not that it really mattered now – who was he going to call anyway? He looked to the police, but the sergeant seemed too busy taking instructions from his radio now to do anything. There were too few of them; a gunfight with these numbers and at this range would only end one way. There was no one from the Institute nearby either. Vic was on his own.

  Don’t panic, he told himself again. Play this calmly and everything will be fine. He pulled up his hood and carefully approached the crowd from the back, thankful that everyone’s attention was on the Purifiers or the police in front of them. Perhaps his parents had heard them coming and already gotten away? Maybe they’d fled through the woods? But wouldn’t he have run into them coming to the house? And how would they have locked the backyard gate from the outside? Perhaps, realizing that Vic was out without his phone, they’d left him the only message they could in haste – locking the gate so that he didn’t stumble inside and run right into the cultists.

  A commotion at the front door of the house caused Vic to pause. A figure emerged from within, stepping out onto the porch. He was clad in the same grim robes as his fellow Purifiers, but his grotesque was golden instead of silver, and he stood a good head taller than those around him. Vic recognized him immediately from the news reports.

  Prophet Xodus.

  He hadn’t realized just how big the zealot was in person. The sight of him filled Vic with a potent mixture of hatred and revulsion, but it was quickly replaced by raw fury when he saw who was being dragged out after Xodus.

  The Purifiers had his parents. Martha and Dan were manhandled out by three more of the masked fanatics and thrown onto their knees side-by-side on the lawn. Dan glared up at them, his left eye bruising, while Martha clasped her face in her hands and wept.

  Vic was about to force his way through the crowd and into the Purifiers’ midst, held back only by his training. He was shaking with rage, his body flushed with adrenaline, and his mind overwhelmed by the need to lash out in his parents’ defense. One thing broke through his furious thoughts, one realization – the appearance of the Borkowskis in the clutches of the Purifiers seemed to have had the exact same effect on their neighbors.

  A cry of outrage went up from the men and women who’d come out of their nearby homes to confront the invaders.

  “That’s Dan and Martha!” Mrs Rasheed shouted. “Who do you think you are? How can you do this? Let go of them both!” A dozen more voices joined hers as people began to push and shove the police, apparently intent on getting at the Purifiers. Despite being wholly unarmed and facing down automatic weaponry wielded by fanatics, Mr and Mrs Borkowski’s neighbors clearly weren’t going to let them be abused right in front of them.

  The abrupt s
welling of aggression caught the police by surprise, almost forcing them back against the yard fence. The sergeant, red-faced, was nearly thrown over and had to be dragged back by another officer. Even several of the Purifiers turned their masked faces in the direction of the towering Xodus, as though seeking instruction.

  The crowd’s anger also cut through Vic’s haze. It made him hesitate before pushing his way to the front. What would that achieve? He was fast, yes, but not fast enough to take out a dozen Purifiers simultaneously. Not fast enough to dodge bullets. Maybe he could get in among them long enough for his parents to make a break for safety, especially if he went chameleon? But that ran the risk of the Purifiers opening up on the crowd. If they did, it would be a massacre. Vic couldn’t risk the lives of his friends and neighbors, let alone his parents. It would be madness to try.

  He forced himself to stand still and keep to the edge of the crowd, just a nondescript kid taking in the drama. He needed a plan. He needed a distraction. Most of all, he needed to remember what Rockslide had told him. Don’t do anything stupid.

  He looked again towards the line of Purifier vehicles ranked along the edge of the lane, currently ignored by both the crowd and the interlopers on the front lawn.

  That was when the gunshot rang out.

  A crack, startlingly loud, clapped back off the front of the Borkowski house. Someone in the crowd screamed. The two sounds combined to freeze time. The angry, forward motion of the residents ceased. The police had drawn their sidearms, but none of them fired. Vic felt as though his heart had stopped. He craned his neck to see his parents, still being held on the lawn. Both had been startled by the shot, but neither had been hit.