by Brian Cody
“Thanks”, Shooter replied. “Is the old dude alive?”
“We’re about to find out.” He opened the door; then looked to the squinted eyes of the elderly man curled into a ball and holding his cane by his side. “Richie the Worm, I presume.” The man lifted his right hand, balled it into a fist, and extracted his middle finger. “No points for originality.” Gerica then grabbed Richie the Worm by the shoulders, hoisted him out of the SUV, and placed him on his feet. “You have the right to remain silent and a bunch of other things I haven’t memorized…yet.” Gerica brushed the man’s shoulders and turned to a nearing figure up the road. “But which this guy will gladly recite to you”, he spoke as Senior stepped past the rocket’s crater.
“Do my eyes deceive me?” Richie hocked with an angular grin. “Arthur Grant?” he gasped while jerking away from Gerica. “The same Arthur Grant whom I left alive because I admired his spunk? Who promised me that he’d follow me across every continent ‘until one or both of us passed’? I must be hallucinating, because the Arthur Grant I had grown to despise would never rely on the sideshow freaks to do his job.”
Senior, with expression hardened and overlain with cuts, dirt, and blood, stopped in front of Richie the Worm. Then, he stepped around him and extracted a pair of handcuffs. “Gerica, rendezvous with Shooter and head to your pick-up location.”
“Do you want me to help round these guys up?” Gerica inquired as he stepped away and crossed his arms. “They should all be alive; the guy covered in burns? He’s a little iffy; and the guy behind me is gonna need some major arm reconstruction surgery—if that’s a thing.”
“For God’s sake, Eri_”—Senior looked up with a pout, but, after several moments of breathing, closed his eyes, straightened his visage, and ripped out his headset. “Do me a favor, Gerica”, he growled. “Start listening to my orders and get the h*** out of here.”
“Yes, sir”, Gerica mumbled as he sidled into the forest.
“Tell me you didn’t”, rang in Gerica’s ears as he stepped past the tree line.
“What?” Gerica replied.
“You just caught Arthur Grant’s ‘prey’—his target for the last twenty years”, Handler began, “from what I understand, with all of the friends and connections he’s made during his time in the bureau, some of whom aren’t on our side of the law (or so I’ve heard), you’d be better off getting on the wrong side of a state senator or maybe the president.”
“I caught the guy for him”, Gerica remarked as he looked back to the headlights flashing into view.
“Dude, you caught his guy”, Shooter exclaimed. “I’m definitely not getting a real job with the FBI now!”
“You know what”, Gerica began as he looked back. “I feel like it was worth it. I like it—I like this—when I’m able to make the world just a little better by catching and-or beating the crap out of guys like them. And, as much I hate being called at random—a week before classes—I wish they’d give me the opportunity more often.”
January 2010
Chapter Two: Friday, 15 January
The roads were unchanging and most of them scenic—down through southwestern New York, across northwestern Pennsylvania, and then south along Interstate 81 long enough for the driver’s senses not to succumb to boredom.
“Harrisburg”, he muttered as he leaned over his steering wheel and watched an exit sign move by his right. He rubbed his forehead while looking past the forest to the amassment of skyscrapers to the north, and he then looked up to the clouds painting the midmorning atmosphere with still, silver bulges.
He activated his left signal and merged his dark green Ford Escape into the left lane. Then, as he accelerated and as a break in the trees appeared, he reached down with his right hand, and, while still facing forward, grabbed his cellphone—a simple flip-model—opened it and glanced down. “Passing…through…Harrisburg”, he muttered as he typed the words with his right hand, the moan of concrete sounding underfoot.
He looked up to an open viaduct just under a mile in length and about two hundred feet in width, and he glanced past the bridge’s western wall and watched the Susquehanna’s silver-blue waters slither through the underlying columns. “Be…at…dorm…by…sundown”, he continued as he pressed each letter, then selected the recipients, and then sent his message. As he placed his phone inside of the rectangular nook in the middle of his dashboard, he looked up, grunted “oh, boy”, and, with a thrust of his leg that weakened as he hit the brake pedal, slowed his Escape as the vehicles in front of him, about two-thirds of the way off of the bridge, decelerated.
He held his breath as his speedometer drop past fifty miles per hour, and he looked up as the vehicles slowed further, with their brake lights remaining lit. He then watched his speedometer drop past thirty miles per hour. Minor traffic; the holidays just passed, but I left on a weekday. I’m still good, he told himself. He looked up and watched the vehicles in front of him stop as the cement was replaced by asphalt, and he continued for another fifty yards before he too stopped.
“O-kay”, he hummed as he glanced to his clock radio—11:15 a.m.—and rolled down his window. The honks and wails of car horns filled the forty-degree air as they blasted in choral dissonance, overcrowding the atmosphere with each successive cry more earsplitting than the previous. He hoisted his head out of his window and then grunted, his shoulders slackening as he found, before him, hundreds of cars not moving and, for the majority of them, showing no activity. “The perfect time for a standstill”, he uttered as he pulled his head into his window and rolled it up. After a groan and then a light slap against his steering wheel, he motioned his right for the radio, but stopped as the doors to the sedan in front of him swung ajar, while a group of three adults poured out of the vehicle and looked skyward. “Oh yeah, that helps…Get back in your freakin’ car!”
He reached for the switch to lower his window, but stopped as others from surrounding vehicles jumped out and, with gazes aimed skyward, ambled towards the roadside. Groaning, he knelt to look to the top of his windshield, and, as he searched the skies, his eyes widened. He opened his door. With head slanting upward and to the right of the road, he stepped out. He closed his door, forsaking any outerwear despite only being dressed in a green t-shirt and blue jeans, and he walked around the hood of his Escape and towards the roadside while looking past the few trees and locking onto a column of piceous smoke rising several thousand feet. As he stepped towards the roadside and stood along the center of the onlooking crowd, tremorous rumbles passed under his feet, while distant, atmospheric pops moved with enough volume to be audible to his ears.
“You’ve got to come see this!” directed him back to the bridge, where another crowd was congregating. He stepped onto the bridge as a few walked or jogged alongside of him, and he walked along the shoulder until coming to some hundred others. There, he passed the threshold marking his standing over water and, there, turned towards both the billowing colossus and its radiant source. The bellows of horns, by then, had ceased, even as the bridge was filled with vehicles and as more halted on the far side.
As he stood amidst that crowd, he looked to the buildings once making up Harrisburg and sitting alongside of the Susquehanna; taking their place were columns doused in orange flames that fed the pillar of smoke. He watched those flames rise and then vanish, and, once more, he traced that smoke, following its ascension past one thousand feet, then five, and then ten thousand feet where that tightened column dispersed. He then stared at the caliginous zenith for seconds, then tens of seconds, and, as he looked, and, as he squeezed his arms, a shape rushed into view, and another followed—two deflagrating forms which drilled through the clouds and plunged with such speed that, as they darted across the river, the few onlookers who had detected their presence hadn’t the necessary time, nor the reaction, to follow their trajectory towards the bridge. Yet he, one of those few, turned as those objects shot overhead, keeping track of their fiery motions; then, he inhaled, squeezed his fis
ts, and started to cry out.
They impacted. Crashing with near-synchronous occurrence, their two strikes were registered, in the majority of the bridge occupants’ minds, as one strident pound and then a vociferous shockwave that rattled vehicles, threw onlookers to the ground, and jostled the outstretching span. He turned towards the crash site the moment after impact and as smoldering debris rained down; and, as his voice left him, a flash of azure-blue light pulsed before him. Another eruption followed with several times more volume and force. In the first instant, too swift to be recognized by the onlookers, one hundred yards along the center of the bridge were pulverized; in the next, as the shockwave rushed out and threw down onlookers on both sides, the remaining edges of the bridge’s center reared up, reared over to opposite sides, and then plunged, and, as they plunged, the pillars holding them shattered, and, with those pillars, the succeeding sets of roadways. As the onlookers regained their bearings, the bridge’s severed remains toppled.
He jumped up and looked back as a fifty-foot section collapsed with dozens of people and cars atop it and vanished into the water. He stepped back as others darted for land, and he watched as a second section plunged in front of him. That section, some thirty feet in width, shattered in two upon hitting the water and tilted to its side where it smashed into additional vehicles. He turned and fled as the destructive rumbles increased in strength behind him, and he ran until a vehicle’s horn blasted with enough volume to overtake the surrounding disorder. He spun and stepped back as he sought to verify that, perhaps, a car had malfunctioned in producing the cry, but he seized, and his legs stopped as he sighted a minivan, partly aflame, one hundred feet behind him and housing several occupants.
His heart skipped. He blinked and found himself drawing towards the vehicle—jogging. He squeezed his fists as the blurs of battered and screaming passersby moved in the opposite direction; and he inhaled as jagged chunks of the bridge plunged into the river before him. He accelerated to a sprint—the van was fifty feet away, but the portions of the road continued to break behind it in a steady succession. Twenty feet, and he sighted a palm banging on the inside of the driver’s window—they’re trapped. Ten feet, and he outstretched his arms as he noticed the two shapes in the back seat—too small to be adults. Three feet, and he reached for the front door’s handle. His right hand cleared the remaining gap—a foot, six inches, inches, one inch—and he started to slam his fist over the handle, but the moment he could feel the charred paint on his fingertips, the van shook, and, before he could solidify his grip, the van plunged. He seized, with his breath sliding into his lungs as he stood on what then was one edge of the bridge; and he watched the van crash into the river and vanish amidst a current of debris. He stepped back as the chunk below him angled downward, but he then bent his knees and bowed; yet, as the hands of another latched onto him, he was dragged.
“Get away from there!” a man, his clothes scuffed and his face covered in burns, called as he dragged the college student by the arm.
He wanted to speak, but the man continued for land, and he, in turn, followed. He closed his eyes for a second, recalling the faces of that trapped family, and he grimaced as nausea rolled within his gut. His bounds weakened. As he added space between himself and his would-be savior, he looked around, finding a burning vehicle along the left shoulder. He ran between the shoulder and the vehicle, and then searched for onlookers before turning for the shoulder, inhaling, and hopping over it.
He held his breath as he fell; he squeezed his fists as he bowed; and he tensed as he outstretched. In an instant of blurring momentum, he zoomed into a projectile dive. He sliced through the water’s surface, and, as he continued towards the riverbed, he levelled off with arms outstretched. Then, he accelerated through the water, swerving as a stony portion plunged to his left and heaving himself upright as another crashed in front of him. He then stopped and scanned the murky depths, with the surface’s dim glow travelling through thirty feet of pressing currents. To his right, he found several cars crushed by a slab of stone; to his left, he found another vehicle with its windows smashed and its interior barren. His fists tightened with every empty vehicle or corpse that he could locate, but, as he turned to search downstream, headlights shined before him. With a kick, he swerved around the slab and found the minivan, its chassis upright, and its passengers struggling to reach the last few concentrations of air along the ceiling.
He stopped alongside of the van, placing his hands on the driver’s side windows and catching the attention of the driver who looked back with eyes widened. He then knelt, grasped the van by its underside, but stopped as another, louder splash reverberated along the surface and was succeeded by a darkening shade. He looked up to another portion of the bridge, some twenty feet in length, falling towards them. He looked back to the van, watching the driver bang on the glass and try to open the door, and he looked up once more. He then pushed off to hover a yard over the riverbed, lifted his arms, opened his palms, and tightened his shoulders. The slab contacted, but, instead of overpowering him by sheer tonnage—thousands of times his bodyweight—it remained in his grasp. With calm visage and unaltered form, he exhaled a small portion of his air, spread his arms, turned, and pushed, launching the slab downstream and beyond view.
He then looked to the van, knelt, and grasped its underside once more. He hoisted it from the riverbed, wound back with it in his right hand, pivoted, and fired towards the surface. Pitched, the van breached in a chute of whitewash and slapped onto the beach of the small island under the severed bridge’s far side. With streams of water emptying through the nooks along the vehicle, the doors flung ajar, and the passengers gasped while looking back to the river.
Beyond their gazes, near the bottom of the river, he looked up to the surface, before deciding that his aim had been true. He then scanned his murky surroundings, in search of other signs of life, but, as he expelled another spurt of air, he found none. With his heartbeat strengthening and his lungs tremoring, he looked to the surface but stopped as a baritonal slam pulsed through the water. He waited, and it repeated. He spun to trace it, and it blasted a third time, a fourth, and then, as he hovered over the riverbed and soared through the water, it continued, a beat every few seconds, then every second, and then, as the sounds increased in strength, twice every second.
He hovered past a car, hoisted himself over a crooked portion, and stopped when he found the source of those beats —the rising of arms, the tightening of fists, and then their downward thrusts against a slab of cement. The impact points, by then, were two smooth and fissured indents on either side of a body pinned by its legs.
His first instinct was to move in, to free what looked to be a man incapable of freeing himself, but, before he could shoot forward, that man lifted his arms and slammed them, with the strength of his impact causing the onlooker to stop—he wasn’t freeing himself, but he was battering two feet of steel-reinforced concrete. The college student proceeded at a slower pace as he watched the trapped man bang his fists. As he came alongside of the man, the bangs slowed, and then, as the trapped man looked up to the surface, the bangs ceased.
In a current of uplifted muck, the slab was overturned. The man watched it rise from his shattered legs, and looked to his sides. As he looked, two arms reached from under his shoulders, curled around his chest, and lifted him, and, as he exhaled the remainder of his own breath, he ascended from the riverbed and breached the surface. The man coughed and gasped as he looked around, while the college student scanned both sides of the bridge, looked to the western side, and kicked his legs.
“No!”—The college student paused as the man squeezed his wrists. The pressure of the man’s coarse hands increased as he angled his wrinkled and bruised visage towards the college student. “No”, the man grunted. “Let me in peace; don’t send me back.” The college student looked on as the man struggled to keep his eyes open. “Let me die in peace”, the man moaned. The college student looked towards the western side
of the bridge as flashing red and white lights penetrated the smog. Then, with a slight angling, he treaded past charred flotsam and towards the bottom of a standing column.
He hoisted himself onto the column, facing backwards and dragging the man onto the weathered space. As the man was outstretched, the college student released, and as the college student looked on, the man grabbed the sides of his outfit and tried to wring the water out of its synthetic cloth. As the man shifted the material—what looked like a jogging coat and pants—the college student sighted a small patch of unmarred coloration—a deep azure which was striped, down the center of the sleeve, with a bright, almost glossy, silver—on the underside of the man’s left arm. The college student then watched the man’s chest expand and compress in an uneven and weakening display, and then locked onto an opening in the man’s jacket—a tear on the middle-left of his torso.
The college student knelt, examining the tear and searching for the depth and severity of what he thought to be a wound, but he stopped after several moments, tightening as a gasp flared his nostrils. As the college student watched the man breathe, he could see, through that tear, a clean view of the underlying cement. The man wasn’t bleeding from it, by then, because, as the college student surmised, most of his blood had already drained. But how…?
The college student stepped back as the man stared at the ceiling. By the man’s wrinkled face, the college student surmised that he was, perhaps, in his upper-seventies, but despite the bruises, the freezing water, the gelid air, legs that were likely nothing more than a flesh-enwrapped stew of muscle and bone, and a loss of blood so substantial that an open wound could spill no more, he still breathed. That elderly man, just around 5'8" with the build of someone who, in his prime, would have borne a muscular frame, was, even more so, still conscious. The college student shook his head and then sifted his hands through the front of his dark blonde hair, while the man looked to him.
