by Alan Janney
“I’ll think about it.”
Chapter Twelve
Wednesday, January 25. 2018
Back in October I agreed to participate in a televised high school quarterback competition. I’d been having a good season and I didn’t realize all the changes that were happening to my body then, otherwise I’d never have agreed to it. But at least I got out of school. Now the day of the competition had arrived, and Mr. Desper, our school’s director of public relations, personally drove Andy Babington and me to a football stadium in Santa Monica. Andy sat in the front. Fox Sports had set up cameras and tents and interview stations around the field, and it was a typical gorgeous clear California afternoon.
Babington had several buddies in attendance but I didn’t. While he talked and joked with the other alpha males, I sat by myself and stewed.
What was I going to do? I hadn’t really thrown a football in two months, but I could now probably chuck it across town. Thanks to the bizarre disease I could win this competition easily and break all the records and get myself on every television set in America. But I wouldn’t be playing on level footing. I had an unfair advantage. All the quarterbacks began throwing to loosen up so I played catch with Mr. Desper. I spun the ball in my hands and smiled grimly. This ball and I could do anything. It would go anywhere for me. In my mind’s eye, visions of passes appeared, paths I could use to deliver the football anywhere, including through car windows a mile away.
“Hey, Chase,” Mr. Desper called. “Take it easy. Save it for the cameras. You’re stripping the skin off my hands.”
This competition was only open to Californians and the surrounding states. Fifty guys had been invited. A pretty reporter introduced us one by one to the camera and rattled off our statistics from last season. I politely answered a few questions and then returned to my seat.
There were three challenges. An obstacle course. An accuracy contest. And a long distance throw. The contestants began cycling through them. Each of us had a name and number pinned to our shirt so our progress could be tracked. Two former professional QBs I didn’t recognize sat in the stands, commentating into microphones for the camera.
My turn. How fast should I go through the obstacle course? Several cameras were recording me; I didn’t want to embarrass myself but I also didn’t need to draw extra attention.
The buzzer sounded and the Outlaw violently seized control of my body. I hadn’t realized how fast my heart was beating, how much adrenaline I had pumping. I practically flew through the obstacle course, far too fast! My legs refused to listen. Chase Jackson was merely a passenger trying to wrench command away from the virus. I was moving like the fate of the world depended on it. Near the end, after scorching through a shuttle run, I made a desperate attempt to sabotage the virus and throw my body at the ground. It partially worked; I stumbled. I gasped and panted, pretending I was out of breath, telling myself, “Slow down, slow down, slow down.” Despite the costly stumble I finished the course in second place, behind a state finalist sprinter.
I stalked to the coolers, gulped down some Gatorade, and returned to my seat. “Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid,” I scolded myself. “What is wrong with me?”
“What the hell is wrong with you, son?” Mr. Desper asked, sitting down in the adjacent seat. He appeared upset. “You just got second place. Which is good. But you walked right past the girl trying to interview you. You’re talking under your breath, like you’re crazier than a jack-in-the-box. You keep shaking your head at nothing. Your eyes are twitching!”
“Ugh,” I groaned. “Sorry. I’m not myself today.”
“You should go act chummy with the other contestants,” he said, pointing at the crowd. A handful of the guys were watching me. “For appearances’ sake. Everyone thinks you’re insane. Which means they think I’m a jackass. And our school is a bunch of jackasses.”
“I’m not talking to anyone,” I said and pressed my face into a towel. “I already know too many people. I just need some peace.”
“You’ve no time for peace, Mr. Jackson. You have two more events.”
The accuracy event was easier to fake. I just simply missed on purpose. I wanted a respectable score, so my misfires weren’t far off target. Instead of dropping the ball into the trash bin, I knocked it over. Instead of throwing the ball through the hoop, I threw it straight over it. Andy got a better score than me and he snickered with his friends when the scores were posted. I finished middle of the pack, and Mr. Desper was obviously disappointed.
Last, the event I’d been dreading, was the long distance toss. How do I look like I’m throwing as hard as I can while actually only throwing a fraction of that? Most of the other athletes had completed all three events and were milling around, killing time until the winners were announced. The ball spun in my hand as I stared down the field, stalling. Markers had been pinned into the turf, designating the current farthest tosses. They appeared ludicrously short.
“Let’s go, Chase,” Mr. Desper clapped behind me.
Okay. I’m just going to land the ball on the marker of the current leader. One of the flags was a lot farther away than the rest, so someone here had a cannon for an arm. I’d tie him. Brilliant. This way, I wouldn’t be much of an anomaly. I took a three step drop, gathered and threw a long tight spiral.
While the ball was in flight, the marker moved. It wasn’t a flag at all! I had aimed at a piece of trash scuttling across the field. I held my breath. This could be a disaster. The ball thumped down and all the guys started cheering. The announcer called out, “76 yards!” I let my air out in relief. Okay, that wasn’t too bad. I beat the other throws by seven yards, which was within reason. I waved to the audience and the cameras, and I declined to throw again.
My combined score earned fourth place. Perfect. No interviews. But probably good enough to keep college scouts interested in me. I grabbed my gear and went to wait in the car. Like all superheroes do.
“Did you see the riots?” my father asked when I arrived home. He was watching television, drinking a soda. I dumped all my bags on the stairs.
“No. There’s another one?”
“Yeah, closer this time,” he said. “I thought you might have seen it, driving home from Santa Monica.”
“Wow, it’s that close?”
“Yep.”
I dropped onto the couch beside him. I’d been spending as much time as possible with Dad ever since I found out about the disease. If I died, I didn’t want him to have any regrets. “How was work?”
He shrugged and said, “Boring. I miss my old job. Look. The Governor called in the National Guard, but that’ll take hours, if not the rest of the day. There,” he pointed at the screen. “A mob ten thousand strong is heading north from Huntington Park.”
“That’s south of downtown,” I said, scrolling through Twitter on my phone. “So like…fifteen miles from us?”
“About. Ten thousand people,” he whistled. “Glad I’m not a cop today.”
“People are going to get hurt. A lot of them are probably hopped up on drugs, too. I’m glad you worked the morning shift.”
My phone chimed.
I had THREE phones now. My personal line, which I paid for. The Outlaw’s phone, which Natalie paid for. Very few people knew that number. And the disposable phone that I used just once to call Beans and the FBI. I left that one upstairs under my mattress.
This was a new text message from Natalie North.
>>The Outlawyers have offered me $5,000 to come speak at their next meeting. LOL! Think I should go?
“The Outlawyers?” I said to myself. “What are the Outlawyers?”
“Outlawyers are fans of the Outlaw,” Dad answered, looking at his phone. His buddies from the police force always kept him updated. “S’what they call themselves.”
“How do you know?”
He shrugged and said, “Everyone knows.”
“I cannot believe Outlaw fan clubs actually exist. Outlawyers. That’s a stupid name.”<
br />
“Why do you hate the guy so much?”
“I don’t hate him,” I protested and stood up to get a better view of the screen. “I just have a more realistic impression of him than most people do, that’s all. Is that…? Are those protestors burning an Outlaw doll??”
“Yep. Burning him in effigy.”
“What? Why?! What’d he do? The world’s gone mad.”
All evening I monitored the television in my room with mounting trepidation. The mob had crossed the Santa Monica Freeway and was flooding into the Fashion District. The task force was slowing fragments of the tide but the full might of the National Guard hadn’t arrived yet. The ocean of angry humanity kept surging north. There appeared to be no rhyme or reason to the crowd; the police were hauling Blacks, Whites, Hispanics and Asians away in droves, young and old. Reports claimed drug use was obvious and rampant. None of the channels mentioned the Chemist, but that might be because he wasn’t public knowledge yet.
On a whim I texted Puckdaddy, You heard of the Chemist?
>>of course dummy, came the instant reply on the Outlaw’s phone.
Know anything about him?
>>nope. hes completely off the grid. well hidden.
Can’t the Shooter do anything about him? Shoot out his tires? Blow up his house?
>>cant find him, stoopid. just told u that. thats not really how the Shooter operates n e way not exactly a public defender
>>also carter wants u 2 stay out of the city 2nite
No problem. I was going to bed early. Nothing on earth could get me into the city.
But then Natalie North texted me an hour later.
>>Hey… I’m reluctant to bother you. But…could you come help? The mob has surrounded my building. They’re breaking in. Yelling something about the Outlaw. I’m really terrified…
Chapter Thirteen
Thursday, January 26. 2018
“Thank you for tuning into Channel Four News, and our on-going coverage of tonight’s dramatic events. The mob’s retreat south continues, as you can see here live, but many of our callers are asking for an Outlaw update. There’s a lot we don’t know yet, but here’s what we do know. Police report last night that a man on a motorcycle broke through their barricade around 9:30pm, driving into the downtown area. The description of the rider fits that of the Outlaw. The cameras on our Channel 4 helicopter caught this fleeting glimpse of a figure leaping from the top of the a parking garage and landing on a hotel roof across Broadway. That bears repeating: this figure, which we presume is the infamous Outlaw, jumped across Broadway, a span of perhaps fifty feet, from several stories up. As you can see here, several minutes later our cameras spotted the same figure on top of the condominium building that should now be familiar to Outlaw enthusiasts. This is Natalie North’s building, the same roof on which the Outlaw fought for Katie Lopez’s safety. It’s also the location of the FBI’s famously unsuccessful attempt to arrest him.
What’s on your screen now is a collage of all the pictures and video footage we have. All the residents of this building, including Natalie North herself, had taken shelter on the roof and were waving their arms for help. We can clearly see the throngs of angry protestors below, breaking the windows and the doors of this building and surging inside.
From the information we’ve gathered, it appears this building was the ultimate target of the entire riot. Channel 4 news has no other reports of similar, concentrated attacks on any other building downtown. This apartment complex was the focal point, and hundreds of rioters swarmed it.
Regina Woods, an apartment owner in the building, offered us this insight. “I don’t know why they attacked us. None of us do, do we? It has something to do with the Outlaw, we know that. They started knocking down our doors, like they were looking for him. It was scary…all the screaming. My husband and I live on the second floor so we ran up here to the roof as quickly as we could. It’s like the world was ending. The people…they were acting… inhuman, I guess is the right word.”
Our cameras had also been tracking the arrival of the National Guard. The combined might of local law enforcement was not enough to repel the riot. This panoramic shot from our helicopter illustrates how close the National Guard’s forces were. Those are the headlights of the incoming military jeeps you can see driving into the city off of Highway 10.
“We thought we could survive until help arrived. We saw their caravan lights a few blocks away. My husband thought so, anyway. I was having trouble thinking anything. But…oh yes, that was when the Outlaw jumped off the roof. He was talking with Ms. Natalie, and then he was gone. I still don’t know why he did that. I feel sure he’s dead, the poor man. I hope not, but…that’s a long fall.”
Those two figures centered on your screen are Natalie North and the Outlaw. Natalie hasn’t yet commented on what exactly happened, but we can see they are talking and pointing downwards. And then… well, just watch. We lose sight of the Outlaw because he simply jumps off the building into the street below. If there was any doubt before that this person, the Outlaw, is either a world-class athlete or using some form of unknown technology or….or something exceptional that we can’t explain yet…well, that doubt has been removed, at least in this reporter’s mind. These are not camera tricks.
Captain Luke Boas describes what he saw.
“Our company entered the city at approximately twenty-one hundred hours. We were boots on ground at the scene of the incident five minutes after that. We engaged the civilian protestors using non-lethal crowd dispersal techniques, and they proceeded south without offering resistance. No casualties. Few injuries. And no, we did not encounter any vigilantes.”
In other words, we don’t know why the Outlaw jumped into the streets and we don’t know where he went. There’s a lot we don’t know, to be frank. We don’t know why the rioters were attacking this building. Or perhaps I should rephrase. We can make an educated guess that the rioters were looking for the Outlaw in that apartment building, but we don’t know why they thought he would be there. Does he live there? Does he…
…wait. I’m just receiving an update. We’re about to put a graphic onto your screen. Apparently Natalie North has taken to twitter. There it is now. She tweets, ‘I’m fine. Scared, but fine. The Outlaw was rescuing people being dragged out of our building. I don’t know what happened to him.’
Okay, so there’s another piece to this puzzle. According to Natalie North, the protestors were dragging residents out into the streets and the Outlaw intervened. If anyone has pictures of this, Channel 4 news would like to see them. This story…”
Natalie North turned the screen off. We had been watching the news report on her iPad. Now everything was dark and silent. I could have been at the bottom of a well.
“Where am I?” I asked. I could see nothing but the vague outline of her face. I didn’t even remember waking up. Maybe I was dreaming.
“We’re alone. In my storage unit, under the apartment building,” she answered, stroking my hair. “I knew that if I took you to my apartment you’d be discovered. So we came down here to protect your anonymity.”
“Thank you,” I said. My voice came out in a croak. “What time is it?”
“Seven in the morning.”
“Do you have any water?”
“I do,” she responded hesitatingly. “But you’ll have to remove your mask.”
“You haven’t taken my mask off? Not even once? While I was asleep?”
“Well, the doctor did. He had to give you mouth to mouth,” she said, and she unscrewed the top of a water bottle.
“Mouth to…” I repeated, confused.
“But I never saw your face. It was too dark.”
“Why was a doctor giving me mouth to mouth?” I asked, feebly ripping off the loosely attached mask. My anonymity felt completely unimportant in this moment. Besides, it was suddenly stifling. If I could barely see her then should barely see me. She poured several gulps of succulent cold water into my mouth.
“I knew it,” she smiled in the dark.
“You knew what?”
“I knew you’d be gorgeous.”
“Hah. You’d say that even if I was an ogre,” I chuckled.
“Probably.”
“Why was a doctor giving me CPR?”
“What do you remember?” she asked.
“Nothing. I remember…I couldn’t reach you…I remember parking…a few blocks from here. And then… nothing.”
“You jumped off the roof, Outlaw,” she grinned and poked me gently in the ribs.
“I did? Why?”
“You and I were watching the mob below us. They captured a kid who lives in my building. The Wares’ son.”
“The Wares’ son,” I frowned. “Do you mean Tank? Why’d they capture him?”
“How do you know Tank?” she asked, clearly surprised.
“Oh. Well. Because. He’s a pretty well-known football player. Still in high school, right? I’ve heard of him.”
“Yeah, that’s him. There was a rumor going around that Tank was the Outlaw. I even wondered that myself once,” Natalie said. She was pressing a wet washcloth onto my face. I actually didn’t feel that bad, now that I was waking up. But having someone care about me was pleasant.
“So the mob grabbed Tank because…they thought he was the Outlaw?” I puzzled. “Is that right?”
“I believe so. That’s what it sounded like. Imagine their surprise,” she snickered, “when the real Outlaw landed in their midst. I hope someone got video of that.”
“What happened?”
“You freed Tank. I don’t know how you survived that fall. It’s five stories.”
“Nothing feels broken,” I commented, wiggling my feet.
“Tank was unconscious. You drove all the rioters back. You fought like a hundred guys. And that’s when the jeeps started rolling in.”
“Then what?” I asked. This was a fascinating story, especially because I participated in it.
“You found me in the lobby and then…” she paused.
