“Let…go,” Brendan gasped.
Tyler shook him. “The lady asked you a question.”
Brendan thrashed against Tyler’s grip.
“There’s an easier way to find out,” Lucille said. “I just thought this would be more fun.” She moved to touch his face.
Suddenly he heard Tina shout, followed by a crash. Tyler collapsed on top of Brendan, his hold releasing. Brendan twisted and pushed the larger boy away as Tyler tried to keep from being hit by a chair a second time. Everyone scrambled back as Tina swung the chair in a high arc. As Tyler tried to get out of the way, Brendan grabbed his foot, and the chair hit him square across his back. Tyler fell to the floor. Brendan got up and Lucille moved towards him.
“Keep away from me,” he said.
Paul and Vlad stood and watched as if waiting for directions. Tina had the chair held defensively, as if waiting for an attack from either of them. Soren was backing towards the door, appearing confused.
“This will only get harder,” Lucille said.
“I don’t know who made you like this, but think about what you’re doing,” Brendan said. “If the other headmaster is back, he’s likely to cause another disaster like the L.A. quake or something even worse by punching holes in the universe.”
“You worry too much. So tell me what you know about the ring you’re going to give me.”
She inched closer. Tina pushed the chair in her direction, making Lucille recoil. Then Paul made a decision. He lunged forward and grabbed the chair, wrenching it from Tina’s hand. Tina didn’t miss a beat. She grabbed an object clipped to a side pouch of her pack. She held the small canister in Paul’s direction and sprayed out a cloud of dark-pink pepper spray.
Lucille and Vlad gagged, blindly trying to get out of the affected area. Paul had his eyes clamped shut. He began swinging wildly, but Tina had backed away. Lucille was trying to scream something through a coughing fit.
The penetrating smell of the spray filled the coffee house and drove an irritating tickle into Brendan’s throat. He fell back to the door. He tried to grab Soren by an arm, but Soren ran towards Lucille and into the lingering cloud. Tina pushed Brendan outside. She kept the spray container out, but no one was coming after them.
“Call the police,” she said.
He got his phone out. Then he heard a humming sound. Tiny black drones descended into the alley, and one of them crashed into his phone, cracking the screen. He ducked as another missed his head. The formation flew straight up and out of sight.
Tina and Brendan ran towards the closest lit street. The buzzing returned.
“Get down!” Brendan yelled.
He counted at least eight drones, all the same size and shape, as they came into the light. The machines adjusted their dive and raced for Brendan. Tina took cover behind a dumpster. Brendan searched for something to use as a weapon, but all the smaller bins in the alley had hinged lids and there was little else to grab. He dropped to the asphalt and covered his head.
The drones streaked past.
“We’ve got to get out of this alley,” Brendan said.
“No kidding.”
They made it to the corner of the pet food store. Brendan heard the buzzing somewhere above them but had a hard time determining what direction it was heading. Then a car honked at them. It was the small orange car he had seen parked at the nurse’s house. The dome light came on when the car stopped, and they saw it was Charlotte sitting behind the wheel.
“Get in!” she shouted.
The drone sound got louder again. Brendan and Tina rushed forward and got into the car. The inside of the tiny subcompact was tight. They crammed in together in the front seat, and Brendan struggled to get the door closed.
“Just drive,” he said as he squeezed in and slammed the door.
“Are either of you hurt?” Charlotte asked as she began to accelerate.
“Nothing serious,” Brendan said. “Those little drones hit hard.”
Charlotte was driving slowly. Brendan looked out the back, expecting at any moment that the car would be pelted by the little black machines.
“Does this thing go any faster?” he asked.
“The last thing we need is for the cops to pull us over. I don’t have a license, and you two aren’t buckled up.”
“Maybe getting the cops’ attention wouldn’t be a bad thing. We need to head to the police station.”
“I’m not doing that.”
“Then drop us off so we can call them.”
Charlotte didn’t say anything, but she headed through the middle of the commercial district. Soon they were passing billboards that marked the town’s outer limits.
“How far can those things chase us?” Tina asked.
“I don’t know,” Charlotte said. “They have a pretty good range, I’m guessing. We can assume they’re up there somewhere.”
“It’s them, isn’t it?” Brendan asked, even though there was no question in his mind. The other Myron Reece, the one from Not-Earth that was his father’s duplicate, no doubt also built drones. He was Drone King on the other Earth. He and the headmaster had returned, and Myron Reece had gotten some serious upgrades. “When did they return?”
“I saw my first drone a week ago,” Charlotte said. “At first I thought I was hearing things. It followed me from Sperry’s house to school, and I heard it again later that day. I thought maybe it was you operating the thing. Last weekend Lucille tried to contact me. She also caught me outside the headmaster’s office one evening. It’s like she was making excuses to have a conversation. She kept trying to touch me, but I kept my distance. I think she got in to see Sperry. He was acting weird when I spoke with him, like he was in a daze. He asked me about the ring, as if he could slip the question in without raising suspicion.”
“It wasn’t me with the drone,” Brendan said. “Not that time at least.”
“I get that now. But there’s something about Lucille that’s changed.”
“Tell us about it,” Tina said. “She’s gone from evil to wicked.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. That wench’s little gift for charm is now supercharged. She has Vlad and Soren under her spell.”
A few passing cars shined bright as they sped by. Charlotte checked the rearview mirror. They were alone again on the road, but she kept driving slowly.
“It’s what I was afraid of,” Charlotte said. “What she can do makes no sense to me, but the way she was acting and then how Sperry was behaving as if he were drugged…I thought maybe she had gotten to you too. So I avoided you.”
“There’s got to be some way we could have talked,” Brendan said. “Because you keeping all of this from us has gotten us where we are now. We can’t just run away. We have to go back and save Vlad and Soren.”
“And I want another crack at Lucille,” Tina said.
“And what would you have told the cops?” Charlotte asked. After a pause, she continued. “If she can get to Sperry, the school staff, and any student, we can’t say if she’s used her influence on security, or on the police.”
“She can’t be that strong,” Tina said.
“She wasn’t before, at least as far as we know. But we don’t know, do we? Is it something she received from Not-Earth, or did she always have this ability? If my father’s back, what if he brought a Not-Earth version of Lucille?”
“Enough about Lucille,” Brendan said. “Is the door to Not-Earth open again?”
Charlotte slowed down and pulled into a turn lane. Several vehicles passed and she pulled out onto the shoulder of a road that led away from the highway. She reached behind her and pulled out a handheld electronic device from a backpack stuffed behind her seat. It had a folded antenna, some switches, an LCD display, and a few colored lights.
“What’s that?” Brendan asked.
“It took me a couple of days,” Charlotte said. “But once I caught sight of the drones and saw that they were nothing like the basic models you work wi
th, I realized someone else was watching me.”
“Because Brendan would never do anything that creepy,” Tina said. She dug her elbow into his chest for emphasis.
Charlotte held the device up and raised the antenna. “It’s a signal tracker. The drones aren’t autonomous, at least as far as I can tell. They no doubt have some programming, but someone’s controlling them with a low-frequency signal. It’s weak, but every time the drones have been around I could get a direction. I keep laying the directions into a map app, and I have a location.”
“Where?” Brendan asked.
“Not far. There’s a row of old hangars near the community airport. That’s where the signal is coming from.”
“So you can tell if the drones are around by a signal.”
“There might be a catch to that. Right now, I have no signal from them. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t on autopilot circling right above us.”
“That’s a chance we’ll have to take. Pull over here first. I’m getting into the back seat so I can breathe.”
10. The Hangar
The Dutchman Springs Community Airport was different from the Mojave–Dutchman Municipal Airport. It was closer to town and only consisted of a single short runway. Charlotte drove them by the road that led to the occupied hangars and then turned around. A few cars were parked in a gravel lot, and one nearby hangar was open and had lights on. He could see the nose and propeller of a plane, and in the distance a second set of hangars surrounded by a chain-link fence. Charlotte headed back down the road and parked near a county trailhead. A sign read, “Dry Creek Trail. Hours: Dawn to Dusk.”
Charlotte consulted her device. “It might be clear. I get nothing.”
They climbed out of the car. Brendan’s head hurt and the bump was tender. He rubbed at his legs, which had started to tingle from being cramped in the back of the tiny car. Once out, Tina caught his attention and turned her phone in his direction.
He mouthed, “What?”
When Charlotte came around the front of the car, Tina said, “Can we have a sec?”
“Sure, no problem.” Charlotte went to the trailhead sign and stood looking up at the sky.
“Check your phone,” Tina whispered.
Brendan did. There was no signal. “Nothing.”
“Mine too,” Tina said. “You realize we’re stuck out here with her and have no way back except with her. No one knows we’re here. This is crazy.”
“What do you want me to do? She rescued us. We need to know what’s going on.”
“We need to go back and call the police. Vlad and Soren need to be taken to a hospital and checked out. We can’t leave them with Lucille while she fries their brains or lord knows what.”
“You saw those drones. They were after us. If the other Myron Reece is running around, it’s bigger than Lucille.”
“Did you bring a gun?”
“Of course not. I don’t own one.”
“Neither do I. So what are we supposed to do when we find Myron or the evil headmaster? We don’t even have the garbage can lid from before.”
“Everything okay?” Charlotte asked.
“We just need a minute,” Brendan said.
Tina led him a few steps away from the car and spoke in a hushed tone. “Think for a moment. The headmaster, both of them, and Lucille, and maybe even Charlotte want the ring you sent off to your father. But they think you have it. You walking over to whatever is at some abandoned part of an airport is stupid.”
“I’m not going to let the headmaster start popping doors between worlds, at least not ours if I can help it. He’s demonstrated he’s willing to hurt people I love. I want to get out in front of whatever is going on instead of being two steps behind. We’ve made the choice to trust her. At least I have. If you want, you can wait in the car.”
Tina shoved him. He thought she might throw a punch, but she just shook her head. “Let’s go. I’ve got you covered. Just don’t ask me with what.”
As long as he didn’t allow his night vision to be spoiled by the distant lights of passing cars, keeping to the trail proved easy enough. The sandy path led along the perimeter of the airport runway and headed in several directions as indicated by trail markers. Short signs identified some of the plants they passed as California juniper and creosote, with the Latin in small type underneath. The ground crunched under their feet.
“That way,” Charlotte whispered, pointing off-trail towards a distant chain-link fence.
“Do you see anything?” Brendan asked.
Charlotte shook her head. “But that’s where the signal originated from.”
“What assets do we have? Because I have nothing since I lost my pack.”
“My glove. I can send someone packing to the downstream Earth. It won’t help with the drones. But if we stay out of sight and just take a look, we can avoid any kind of fight.”
Tina picked up a small stick, considered it, and threw it into the darkness. “Do we, you know, need to come up with a code phrase in case we get switched or turned into another one of Lucille’s love slaves?”
“What do you have in mind?” Brendan asked.
“The first person to speak says, ‘Are you the White Witch?’ And then the second person replies with, I don’t know, a random phrase that couldn’t be a yes or no answer that someone would guess.”
“Sounds complicated. Let’s just go and check out the hangars and we’ll keep an eye on each other.”
They followed Charlotte to the fence. The links were held to the poles by a few pieces of heavy wire. No Trespassing signs hung at regular intervals. She produced pliers and started cutting. Each snip sounded too loud. Brendan kept his eyes trained on the row of hangars but saw no light or activity. He and Tina pulled at the fence, and it folded enough that they could easily step through to the other side.
He double-checked his phone. Still no signal.
They navigated around stacks of debris so tall that it all might have been a demolished hangar. Two rows of four hangars faced each other, their large rolling doors all closed. At the far end, a small white electric car was parked. They moved along the rear of one of the rows. Besides the high rumble of a distant motorcycle, the night was silent. A small excavator was parked by a green portable toilet. A fence gate that led to the rest of the airport had a chain and an unlocked padlock holding it closed.
Brendan spotted a coffee cup set on the ground at the side door of the hangar across from them. Charlotte nodded when he pointed it out. They crossed the lane between hangars. Enough lights shined from the active part of the airport that they were silhouetted once they broke from the shadows. Brendan expected the drones to appear at any moment.
He smelled the cigarettes before he saw them. The coffee cup held at least a half dozen extinguished butts in a few inches of water. A plastic lighter lay next to the cup. He tried the door. It wasn’t all the way closed even though the handle didn’t turn. He pulled it open slowly and peered inside.
Some warm lights burned on the far side of the hangar. Besides what looked like a long car covered with a tarp, the hangar was mostly empty. He could see a small office. A man was inside, reclined on a chair, a tablet on his pronounced belly. He had white earphones on his head.
“Wait here,” Brendan whispered.
He went forward alone into the hangar. The air inside smelled of soot and mold. As he got closer to it, he saw the tarped car was larger than he had thought. It was tall enough that he thought it might be a small truck, but then he noticed an airplane wing on the floor against the far wall. Was the tarp over an airplane with its wings removed? Doubt filled him as he got closer to the office. Perhaps this was some airplane owner, mechanic, or caretaker of the airport. They were in the wrong place. This wasn’t the headmaster or Not-Earth’s Drone King, but some poor sap working a job with horrible hours.
But Brendan had to be sure.
He made it to the side of the office and looked through the window. It was hard to make out bec
ause of the angle, but it looked like the man was playing some sort of game on the tablet. He occasionally tapped the screen. Brendan didn’t recognize him. He ducked down. Little else inside the hangar was particularly interesting. There were other hangars to check. Time to go.
The man in the office made a loud yawn and the chair squeaked. Brendan tucked himself behind a tall filing cabinet. The man was shuffling away from his desk. Brendan drew his knees in tight and tried not to breathe. But then he heard the distinctive sound of a toilet lid dropping down against porcelain. He got up slowly and looked back into the office. The man was gone, but there was another light from the far end of the office. A door to a small bathroom was partway shut. This would be the perfect time to leave.
But then he caught sight of the tablet. The screen was upside down, but he could make out a four-way split of aerial views, as if the footage were taken from four security cameras. Or drones.
The screen timed out and went dark. Brendan hurried into the office and picked up the tablet. Perhaps it was really was nothing but some game or simulation, but he had to be sure, and if there was a lock screen he would have no way to find out. He tapped the home key to wake it up.
No lock screen. The tablet displayed the points of view of four drones, all hovering in different places. He instantly recognized the Bean, his dorm, and the science building. He counted twelve thumbnails at the bottom of the screen. Four were highlighted. If it was one thumbnail for each drone, that meant a dozen of the little black machines were flying around Dutchman Springs, perhaps minus one. The program had other buttons, but he didn’t want to chance upsetting anything if it caused a drone to land or if it executed some macro with an unknown outcome. He surveyed the office, seeing little else but a coffee machine, a cooler, and a plastic water bottle.
The lights in the hangar came on.
“What are you doing?”
A grizzled man with a clean-shaven head stood by a workbench and the light switches. He wore a heavy jacket over layers of shirts. In one hand he held a metal flashlight. Where had he come from? And why was he dressed for cold weather? With the light on, Brendan could see a pair of sleeping bags lying in a corner of the hangar with some camping equipment set up nearby.
The Supervillain High Boxed Set: Books One - Three of the Supervillain High Series Page 30
