by Lyle Howard
She looked up at him. “Yeah, an honest injun.”
His expression was more overcast than the weather. “It don’t look too good, child.”
Three steps forward and two steps back was the cadence for the two of them as they struggled against the sadistic elements.
“Where is this place we’re trying to find?”
Lincoln lifted his collar in an ineffectual effort to give them a little extra protection. “Carpenter said it was at the end of the runway.”
Julie stopped. “There’s two ends to every runway!” They were standing in the middle of the runway on one of the broken white lines that marked the centerline of the asphalt landing strip.
“I’m just sure that he had to have meant the far end!”
“Oh yeah? Why?”
“Instinct.”
“Instinct?”
Lincoln tried to sound confident, but he wasn’t sure that he was too convincing. “That’s right, instinct.”
Julie squinted into the darkness. “I just wish I could see.”
“Let’s just keep going in the direction we’re headed, and if worse comes to worse, we can find a building where we can ride out the hurricane.”
Julie pointed to the hangar that was still smoking behind them. “A building? I’m not so sure that I like that idea!”
Abe trudged forward with a reluctant Julie Chapman tucked under his arm. Battling against the lashing winds was like trying to move a brick wall with your face. After five minutes or so, the sheer exertion would have taken its toll on anyone’s system; after nearly a half-hour, only the healthiest would survive. What Abe Lincoln wouldn’t have given for a couple of aspirin at that very moment. He could feel his pulse throbbing in his head like the back beat on one of his kid’s rap records. He knew that this was no place for a person with high blood pressure. His greatest fear wasn’t a stroke of lightning. Abe’s greatest phobia was a stroke … period.
“Look!”
Lincoln narrowed his eyes in an attempt to see where Julie was pointing. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”
“There … up ahead … is that the bunker?” It looked like nothing more than a steel doorway surrounded by concrete, something like a small storage shed, but it just possibly could have been the entrance to the underground shelter.
“I … I think … that might be the place.”
Noticing the sudden pallor that crossed Lincoln’s face, Julie gently put her hand on his cheek. “Are you okay?”
The overweight detective took a labored breath. “My head’s pounding, that’s all. Nothing that a couple of Tylenol won’t take care of.”
“Lean on me.”
“What?”
Julie pulled him closer to her. “I said, lean on me.”
“I’m not exactly a lightweight, I’ll crush you.”
Julie pulled his arm around her neck. “I’m a firefighter, for God’s sake! I carry people all of the time! Now lean on me!”
Lincoln could hear Julie inhaling and exhaling in great blasts of breath as she struggled to haul him the last hundred yards to the threshold of the bunker. When they reached the doorway, she let him slump against the wall. “Wait here while I get you some help.”
“I promise … I’m not going anywhere.”
There was a pressurized wheel on the door that wouldn’t budge when Julie tried to turn it. She slammed her fist on the door, but the sound was hollow and empty. She quickly surmised that this was probably just the outside hatch to an air lock. Attached to one of the upper corners of the small building was a closed-circuit video monitor. Julie waved wildly into the camera until she realized that the little red light wasn’t on above the lens. No power.
“Having a problem?” Abe asked between forced breaths.
“I can’t get the door open! No one knows we’re even out here!”
Abe felt like there was an elephant sitting on his chest. “Which way were you turning the lock?”
Julie thought for a moment. “Clockwise.”
Lincoln shook his head slowly. “The door is shut from the inside, remember? To open it from this side, turn it counterclockwise.”
Julie moved back to the entrance and tried again. The wheel spun easily and the door hissed open. “Hang in there, buddy. I’ll be right out.”
She was back in less than two minutes with a technical sergeant named Bullock, who also served as the group’s medic. Julie bent down and put her head under Abe’s arm. “Give me a hand with him.”
The sergeant stood solemnly without moving. Julie grappled against Lincoln’s motionless bulk.
“What’s the matter with you?” she yelled at the young officer. “I can’t lift him by myself!”
Bullock reached down and mindfully placed his fingertips on the side of Lincoln’s neck.
“Come on, you big jerk, get up!” Julie pleaded to Abe.
The medic pulled Julie away. “You’re friend … is dead, ma’am.”
“No!”
“I … I’m sorry, ma’am, but he is.”
“No, he can’t be. I only left him for a minute … I told him I’d be right back for him … he promised me, he wasn’t going anywhere!”
“I’m so sorry, ma’am, what can I do to help?”
Julie knelt down and cradled Abe’s head, crying as she rocked him back and forth like a baby that needed a long sleep. Her tears came harder than the rain from Andrew. “No, no, no, no … NO!”
Bullock had to turn away, or else he might have broken down, too. “I’ll go down and bring up someone else to help. We’ll carry him inside.”
“He was a good man … he put everyone’s welfare above his own,” Julie sobbed through quivering lips.
Bullock pulled off his rain slicker and draped it over the detective’s lifeless form. “Those words would make a mighty appropriate epitaph, ma’am! I’d like to be remembered that way myself someday!” He bent over and helped Julie to her feet. He tried to lead her inside, but she wouldn’t budge. Julie knew her place was outside, together with Abe Lincoln, until they came out and got him.
Bullock paused in the entry way. “You know what, ma’ am? These days, good friends are hard to come by. It’s always been my experience that just when you find someone as exceptional your friend here, fate throws a monkey wrench into the works and screws things up.”
Julie looked across the tarmac to a distant place that was camouflaged by the rain and gloom. “You’ll never know how true that is, Sergeant … you’ll never know!”
THIRTY NINE
2:27 a.m.
Hurricane Andrew lumbered ashore with all of the callous confidence of a heavy weight champion. The storm’s savage wrath descended upon the Air Force base with all the brutality nature could conjure pulverizing everything in its path, and leaving nothing but rubble and devastation in its wash.
Once a top strategic military installation, Homestead Air Force Base was being reduced to nothing more than a debris-covered runway surrounded by the ruins of countless lives. Cars and other light-duty vehicles were actually lifted off the ground by the powerful gales and tossed about the base like discarded candy wrappers, their gas tanks exploding into short-lived plumes of fire, the flames quickly quenched by the rain and wind. Most of the overhead catwalks in hangar twelve were torn from their supports, and now hung at disjointed angles, like pieces of a gigantic modern abstract sculpture that nobody could quite interpret. The flickering light from the single flood lamp that had snagged itself onto a bent length of conduit pipe shone only against the northern wall, turning that aluminum barrier into a canvas for a kaleidoscope of eerie shadows and twisted shapes.
Antoine Xavier had long passed over the thin line that separated paranoia from madness. As he stood in the center of the hangar, anchored against the wind by the remarkable traction of his bare feet, he brought his hand up to his cheek and touched the scaly aberration on his face. The experience of being somewhere other than his own secluded bathroom and feeling his true e
pidermis, naked to the world, was exhilarating. It gave him a feeling of emotional release, and a freedom that he had never believed possible before. For a while, at least, there was no longer any need to shy away from civilization, or to live with his true visage hidden under pounds of plastic. This rare feeling of emancipation suddenly filled his tormented spirit with feeling of invincibility, and it coursed through his veins like a transfusion of fresh blood.
“Show yourself, Cutter,” he screamed, “I can’t see you, but I can smell your fear like the ssstench from a rotting fish!”
Lance took a deep breath and stepped out from beneath the sanctuary of the stairwell. The traction on his Reeboks wasn’t nearly the same as Xavier’s bare feet, and he found himself hanging on the metal banister to prevent himself from being blown out of the front of the hangar. “No more killing!” he yelled back across the hangar’s cavernous expanse.
Xavier tipped his head as though Lance was speaking a foreign language and he was having a hard time deciphering it.
“We can both walk out of here alive, Antoine! I just want to forget about this place! No one has to find out what happened here!”
Xavier slipped his hands into his pockets as though he were holding a casual conversation with a friend on a street corner. His pale blue pin-striped shirt was matted against his body, while his solid navy tie was blown back over his left shoulder. “Nothing is ever that sssimple, Cutter! As long as you are alive, sssomeone will know about me!”
Lance let go of the railing with his right hand and crossed his fingers over his heart. “No one will ever find out! Why would I say anything?”
Xavier inched closer, his dripping face half-masked in shadow and light. “You’ve got to be kidding me, right? After I take care of you, I still have to find your girlfriend and that damned cop!”
Lance could feel his feet slipping out from under him, so he locked his arm around the banister. “I just want to put this nightmare behind me and get on with my life! None of us will say a word to anyone!”
Xavier shook his head the way a shamed parent would look at their child. “You sssurprise me, Cutter! I find it appalling that after wasting a third of your life fighting fires, you don’t aspire to anything greater than a groveling idiot!”
From somewhere in the back of the building, the sound of tearing metal rose above the screeching wind as an overhead light stanchion was torn from its mounting brackets. It fell with a dull, sickening thud, as yet another technician’s lifeless body was crushed beneath its unwieldy weight.
“I’ve used my abilities to save innocent lives … isn’t that divine enough aspiration for any man?” Lance yelled back.
Xavier paused by a misshapen corpse which was blocking his path. The body was so decimated that telling its gender would have to be left up to a specialist. The cadaver’s black hair was smeared with blood running out of its lacerated nose. Xavier nudged the lifeless body with his foot. “Man? Don’t you understand, Cutter?” he asked, his voice turning solemn. “We are different than these people … we’ve never been like them!”
Lance suddenly felt a strange sort of pity for the unbalanced freak of nature standing in front of him.
“This world isss mine for the taking, Cutter!” Xavier began to preach, his voice rising with excitement. “You haven’t even begun to imagine all of the ssskills I’ve been endowed with! Every day of my life is a never ending journey of discovery!”
Lightning crashed somewhere close to the hangar, sending a thunderous vibration through the ground. Lance could feel the muscles in his arms beginning to tire against the steady onslaught of the powerful winds.
“The time has come for you to learn what I’m capable of, Cutter! Consider that lightning bolt out there, the ssschool bell! It’s time you went back to classss!”
Lance only had a few more seconds of strength left in his arms. His drenched t-shirt flapped against his chest like a loose sail. “Stop the bullshit, Antoine, what do you really want from me?”
The doctor’s words came out strong and succinct. “I feel like a heavyweight boxer whose had his title sssuddenly revoked … and for no good reason! I feel cheated … robbed of my status! Until three days ago, I thought I was the undisputed champion of the world … now, all I want is my rightful ssshot at the crown!”
Lance wanted to scream from the burning pain in his shoulders, but he had a feeling that the admission of his own weakness would only fuel Xavier’s frenzy. “You … you want to fight me?”
The corner of the doctor’s mouth curled into a grin. “Now you’re catching on!”
“What is me whooping your ass going to prove?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Xavier spotted the small gas generator that powered the last remaining floodlight. Walking over to it, he tore away the electrical cord, sending the hangar into total darkness. Lance’s vision faltered for a brief moment, until his narrow pupils dilated just enough to adjust to the total lack of light.
“Thisss is the perfect proving ground for both of usss, Cutter! One on one … a battle to the death! Let’sss find out once and for all, which one of usss was our father’s ultimate accomplishment!”
“And if I choose not to fight?”
Xavier reached up and pulled the remainder of the prosthetic latex from his face, revealing the full extent of his reptilian skin. The green flesh bisected his countenance neatly down the middle as if the scales had been painted on. “Then you will die an ignorant man, Cutter!”
The driving wind loosened the last support on one of the catwalks directly overhead. With the speed and agility of a salamander, Xavier sprang out of the way as the walkway came crashing to the floor. “That would have been too easy for you, Cutter,” he said, jumping up on the catwalk’s metal framework and walking along its edge like a gymnast on a balance beam.
Lance watched Xavier glide along the girder, his toes curling around the structure with the dexterity of a second pair of hands.
“Are you watching this, Cutter? Even in this wind, do you see how natural this comes to me?”
Lance felt like he was walking on ice. There was no way he could keep up with Xavier in this storm. The doctor jumped off the catwalk and, making his way over to Lance, wiggled his fingers in front of him like he was toying with the family pet. “Come on, Cutter, don’t make thisss too easy for me! I’ve been waiting for this moment all day; don’t take away what little pleasure I have in my life!”
Lance held onto the banister with his left hand, and began swinging wildly with his right. Xavier slapped away the uncoordinated blows like he was swatting at butterflies. “This will never do, Cutter. The way you fight, I’m almost ashamed to call you my little brother!”
Lance was running out of time; it was now or never … He let go of the banister and lunged at Xavier, locking his arms around the doctor’s waist. Xavier began spinning in place, trying to get Lance to let go, but his grip was as stubborn as a mother-in-law. Xavier stopped twirling and started pounding on Lance’s back, each fist landing like a sledgehammer on his unprotected shoulder blades. Each of Xavier’s next words was punctuated by a brutal blow to Lance’s spine. “Is … this … the … best … you’ve … got… Cutter?”
Lance could hear his vertebrae crackling each time another fist hit its mark. His grip slipped lower and lower until he was lying flat on the saturated concrete with only his hands grasping Xavier’s naked ankles. With his leg muscles bursting with inhuman power, Xavier swung his right foot and caught Lance beneath his chin. The sheer force of the kick snapped Lance’s head backward and almost stood him completely upright. Blood gushed out of his mouth as his teeth snapped shut on his tongue like a bear trap.
Xavier grabbed Lance by the collar of his tattered t-shirt and held him out at arm’s length. “This is much too easy,” he complained, shaking his head, “much, much, too easy.” With a left-handed roundhouse punch, Xavier launched Lance back toward the stairwell. Lance slid across the floor, trying to find a foothold, b
ut there was none to be had. He crashed backward into the stairs, knocking the wind out of his lungs like it had been siphoned with a pump. The right side of Lance’s face was already beginning to swell as blood spurted from a three-inch-long gash below his eye. Even the cold downpour couldn’t relieve the stinging agony of his bruised cheek bone.
Xavier jumped back onto his perch atop the toppled catwalk and began strutting like a victorious wrestler on a tightrope. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he yelled, mimicking any one of a thousand professional ring announcers, “at two-oh-eight, in the first round, the winner … and still champion … reclaiming his title from the unqualified challenger … Antoine Xaaavier!” The doctor began taking barefooted bows, turning to give each direction of the compass equal time, while hot lightning lit up the hangar’s interior like a million flashbulbs.
Lance’s right eye was nearly closed, but he could still focus on Xavier’ s feet. Then something struck him like a slap across the face … it was comprehension. He looked down at his own feet. His white sneakers were streaked pink from the blood that drizzled down from his wounds. Sneakers … that’s what the problem was! Xavier was barefoot, while Lance was still wearing his Reeboks! He reached down, and slowly, painfully, slipped off his sneakers and socks, tossing the waterlogged footwear under the stairwell behind him. Now, each of his feet slapped down onto the wet concrete as if they had suction cups attached to the bottoms. This was so strange … it wasn’t any physical ability that was making them stick, but more of a mental directive. He wanted his feet to adhere to the ground, and suddenly they did!
So, one hand at a time, Lance pulled himself up on the stairwell’s thin metal banister. The wind thrashed at his body, but after a brief moment of orientation, he found it rather easy to keep his balance. He almost found himself laughing under his breath, and thinking about the movie; Star Wars. He felt like Luke Skywalker, the reluctant Jedi Knight, who, after learning to listen to his innate instincts, became tuned into the mystical powers of the Force.
“Hey, Antoine,” Lance struggled to yell through swelling lips, “I’m tired of watching you prance around like you’re a Goddamned ballerina! It’s time to put your money where your mouth is!”
