“This way,” she says, jumping over the guardrail and entering a barren field leading to the dark hills a mile away.
I sprint as fast as I can with Sam and the Chest. Bernie Kosar tires of hobbling and morphs into a bird and speeds ahead of us. Not a minute later the second car arrives on the scene, followed by a third. I can’t tell if the officers are pursuing us on foot; but if they are, Six and I can easily outrun them even as weighed down as we are.
“Put me down,” Sam finally says.
“Are you okay?” I put him down.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Sam is a little unsteady. Sweat beads his forehead, and he wipes it away with the sleeve of his jacket and takes a deep breath.
“Come on,” Six says. “They aren’t going to let us go that easily. We have ten minutes, fifteen at the most, until we’re hiding from a helicopter.”
We make for the hills, Six in the lead, then me, then Sam struggling to keep up. He moves much faster than when we ran the mile in gym class a few months ago. It feels like years ago. None of us looks back; but as soon as we reach the first incline, the howl of a bloodhound fills the air. One of the officers has brought a police dog.
“Any ideas?” I ask Six.
“I was hoping we could hide our stuff and go invisible. That would elude a copter, but the dog will still pick up our scent.”
“Shit,” I say. I look around. There’s a hill to our right.
“Let’s get to the top and see what’s on the other side,” I say.
Bernie Kosar zips ahead and disappears into the night sky. Six leads, stumbling wildly up. I follow behind her; and Sam, who is breathing heavily yet still moving swiftly, brings up the rear.
We stop at the top. Faint outlines of more hills as far as I can see, nothing more. Very softly I hear the trickle of running water. I spin around. Eight sets of flashing lights line the highway, sandwiching Sam’s father’s truck. In the distance, coming from both directions, two more cop cars are speeding towards the scene. Bernie Kosar lands beside me and turns back into a beagle, tongue dangling. The police bloodhound barks, closer than before. There’s no doubt that it’s following our scent, which means that officers on foot can’t be far behind.
“We have to get the dog off our trail,” Six says.
“Can you hear that?” I ask her.
“Hear what?”
“The sound of water. I think there’s some kind of stream at the bottom of this. Maybe a river.”
“I hear it,” Sam chimes in.
An idea pops into my head. I unzip my jacket and remove my shirt. I wipe it across my face, my chest, soaking up every bit of sweat and scent I might have. I throw it at Sam.
“Do what I just did,” I say.
“No way, that’s disgusting.”
“Sam, the entire state of Tennessee is hot on our trail. We don’t have much time.”
He sighs but obeys me. Six does too, unsure of what I have planned but willing to go along with it. I put on a new shirt and slip on my jacket. Six tosses me the soiled shirt and I rub it over Bernie Kosar’s face and body.
“We’re going to need your help, buddy. You up for it?”
I can hardly see him in the dark, but the sound of his tail thumping excitedly on the ground is unmistakable. Always eager to assist, happy to be alive. I can sense within him the odd thrill of being chased, and I can’t help but feel it myself.
“What’s your plan?” Six asks.
“We have to hurry,” I say, taking the first steps downhill towards the running water. Bernie Kosar again turns himself into a bird and we race down, occasionally hearing the bloodhound bark and howl. It’s closing the gap. If my idea fails, I wonder if I might communicate with it and tell it to stop following us.
Bernie Kosar waits for us at the bank of the wide river, which has a still quality to its surface that tells me it’s much deeper than it sounded from the top of the hill.
“We have to swim across,” I say. There’s no other choice.
“What? John, do you understand what happens to the human body when it’s in freezing water? Cardiac arrest from shock, for one. And if that doesn’t kill you, then the loss of feeling in your arms and legs will make it impossible to swim. We’ll freeze and drown,” Sam objects.
“It’s the only way to get the dog from following our scent. At least we’ll have a chance this way.”
“This is suicide. Remember for a second that I’m not an alien.”
I drop to a knee in front of Bernie Kosar. “You have to take this shirt,” I say to him. “Drag it across the ground as fast as you can, for two or three miles. We’ll cross the river so the bloodhound loses our scent and follows this one instead. Then we’ll run some more. You should have no trouble catching up to us if you fly.”
Bernie Kosar transforms into a large bald eagle, takes the shirt into his talons, and speeds off.
“No time to waste,” I say, gripping the Chest in my left arm so I can swim with my right. Just as I’m about to jump into the water Six grabs my bicep.
“Sam’s right; we’ll freeze, John,” she urges. She looks afraid.
“They’re too close. We have no other choice,” I say. She bites her lip, her eyes sweeping the river, and turns back to me, giving my arm another squeeze.
“Yes we do,” she says. She lets go of my arm, and the whites of her eyes glisten in the dark. She pushes me behind her and takes a step towards the water, then tilts her head in a gesture of concentration. The bloodhound barks, closer than before.
She exhales slowly. At the same time she lifts her hands out in front of her, and as they come up, the waters of the river begin to part right there before us. With a loud rushing sound, the water foams and churns as it recedes upward to reveal a muddy path five feet wide that cuts across to the other bank. The water hovers, looking like a wave ready to crash. But instead it hangs suspended while icy mist coats our faces.
“Go!” she orders, her face strained in concentration, her eyes on the water.
Sam and I jump down from the bank. My feet sink and the mud comes nearly to my knees, but it still beats swimming in forty-degree temperatures in the dead of night. We tramp through it, taking big steps and struggling to lift our feet from the heavy mud. Once we’re across Six follows, rotating her hands as she passes through the massive waves ready to crash into each other, waves of her own creation. She climbs up the bank and then lets it go. The waves smash down with a deep hollow thud as though someone has just done a cannonball into it. The water rises and falls, and then looks no different than it did before.
“Amazing,” Sam says. “Just like Moses.”
“Come on, we have to get into the trees so the dog can’t see us,” she says.
The plan works. After just a few minutes, the dog pauses at the riverbank and sniffs wildly. He circles several times and then rushes after Bernie Kosar. Sam, Six, and I take off in the opposite direction, just inside the tree line but near enough to still see the river, going as fast as Sam’s legs will permit.
The sound of men’s voices yelling to one another reaches us for the first few minutes until we outrun them. Ten minutes after that we hear the first whir of a helicopter. We stop and wait for it to appear. A minute later, a spotlight shines high in the sky a few miles away in the direction Bernie Kosar has flown. The light sweeps the hills, shining one way, rushing the other.
“He should have been back already,” I say.
“He’s fine, John,” Sam says. “He’s BK, the most resilient beast I know.”
“He has a broken leg.”
“But two healthy wings,” Six counters. “He’s fine. We have to keep going. They’ll figure it out soon, if they haven’t already. We have to stay ahead. The longer we wait, the closer they’ll get.”
I nod. She’s right. We have to keep going.
After a half mile the river takes a sharp turn to the right, back towards the highway, away from the hills. We stop and huddle beneath the low branches of a tall tree.
&n
bsp; “Now what?” Sam asks.
“No idea,” I say. We turn in the direction in which we had just fled. The helicopter is closer now, its spotlight still sweeping back and forth across the hills.
“We have to leave the river,” I say.
“Yes, we do,” Six says. “He’ll find us, John. I promise.”
We hear an eagle’s scream high in the treetops not far off. It’s too dark to see where he is, and perhaps too dark for him to see us. I don’t think twice about it, even if it will give away our position-I aim my palms towards the sky and turn my lights on, letting them shine as brightly as I can for a full half second. We wait, listening with our breaths held and heads craned. And then I hear a dog’s pant, and Bernie Kosar, changed back into a beagle, comes charging up from the riverbank. He’s out of breath but excited, his tongue falling from his mouth and his tail whipping in the air a thousand miles an hour. I bend down and pet him.
“Good job, buddy!” I say, planting a kiss on the top of his head.
And then it happens, a quick end to a celebration that was only just beginning.
While I’m on bended knee, a second copter shoots up over the hill behind us, instantly hitting us with its bright spotlight.
I bolt to my feet, blinded at once by the glaring beam.
“Run!” Six says.
We do, sprinting up the nearest hill. The helicopter drops down and hovers so the wind off its rotors beats against our backs and causes the trees to bow. The forest floor is a haze of debris, and I drape my arm across my mouth to breathe, keeping my eyes squinted to alleviate the stinging dirt. How long until the FBI is called?
“Stay where you are!” a male voice blares from the copter. “You’re all under arrest.”
We hear shouts. The officers on foot can’t be more than five hundred feet away.
Six stops running, which causes Sam and me to do the same.
“We’re toast!” Sam yells.
“Okay, you bastards. We’ll do this the hard way,” Six says under her breath. She drops the bags, and for a second I think she plans to make Sam and me invisible. While I have no problem with leaving the bags behind, what does she expect me to do with the Chest? She can’t make all of us invisible and that, too.
A brilliant stroke of lightning splits the night sky in two, followed by the deep groan of rolling thunder.
“John!” she yells without looking away.
“Right here.”
“Take care of the cops. Keep them away from me.”
Now I understand. I shove the Chest into Sam’s arms, who stands beside me, unsure of what to do. “Guard this with your life,” I tell him. “And stay down!” I turn to Bernie Kosar and communicate that he needs to stay with Sam in case our plan falls apart.
I sprint down the hill as another bolt of lightning, chased by a clap of thunder dark and menacing in tone, flashes across the sky. Good luck, fellas, I think, knowing full well the power of Six’s abilities. You’re going to need it.
I reach the bottom and hide behind an oak. The voices draw near, moving swiftly towards both pillars of light. Rain begins to fall, cold and heavy. I glance up through the thick drops and see both helicopters struggling against the gale-force winds, but somehow still keeping their beams steady. That won’t last for long.
The first two officers blow past me, followed closely behind by a third. I reach out with my mind when they’re fifteen feet away, grab all three in midstride, and yank them towards the thick oak. They surge backwards so fast I have to leap out of the way to keep from being hit. Two of them fall lifelessly to the ground, knocked unconscious by the tree. The third lifts his head, confused, then reaches for his gun. I tear it from its holster before his hand even touches it. The metal feels cold against my palm, and I turn to the two copters and hurl it like a bullet at the nearest. That’s when I see the eyes, doleful and black in the middle of the storm. Soon the old, withered face takes shape. The same face I saw in Ohio when Six killed the beast that wrecked the school.
“Don’t move a muscle!” I hear behind me. “Hands in the air!”
I turn to the officer. Without his gun, he aims his Taser straight at my chest.
“Which is it, hands in the air or don’t move a muscle? I can’t do both.”
He cocks the Taser. “Don’t be a smartass, kid,” he says.
Lightning cracks, followed by a roar of thunder that makes the officer jump in surprise. The officer looks towards the sound, and his eyes open wide in alarm. The face in the clouds, it’s awoken.
I rip the Taser from his hand, then punch him hard in the chest. He sails thirty feet backwards and crashes into the side of a tree. While my back is still turned, the crack of a nightstick slams against my skull. I fall face-first in the mud and sparkling fuzz fills my vision. I turn as quickly as I can, lift my hand towards the cop who hit me, and get a firm grip around him before he’s able to hit me again. He grunts, and with all of my might I throw him as hard as I can straight up in the air. He screams until he’s up so high I can no longer hear him over the copter blades and rumbling thunder. I feel the back of my head and look at my hand. It’s covered with blood. I catch the officer when he’s within five feet of dying. I let him hover a few seconds before tossing him against a tree, knocking him unconscious.
A loud explosion tears through the night, and the whir of the copters cuts off. The wind stops. The rain stops, too.
“John!” Six screams from the top of the hill; and somehow in the pleading, desperate tone of her voice, I know what she needs me to do.
The lights in my hands snap on, two glowing spotlights every bit as bright as those just extinguished. Both helicopters are wrecked and twisted, and smoke pours from them as they free fall. I don’t know what the face has done to them, but Six and I must save the people aboard.
As they torpedo down, the helicopter farthest from me jerks upwards. Six is trying to stop it. I don’t think she’ll be able to, and I know that I can’t. It’s too heavy. I close my eyes. Remember the basement in Athens, the way you captured everything inside the room to stop the speeding bullet. And that’s what I do, feeling everything inside the cockpit’s interior. The controls. The weapons. The chairs. The three men sitting in them. I grab hold of the men, and as the trees begin to snap under the weight of the falling copter, I yank all three out. The copter crashes to the ground.
Six’s copter hits the ground at the same time as mine. The explosions reach out over the treetops, two red balls of fire floating up from the twisted steel. I hold the three men in the air a safe distance from the damage, and bring them carefully to the ground. Then I race back up the hill to Six and Sam.
“Holy crap!” Sam says, his eyes wide-open.
“Did you pull them free?” I ask Six.
She nods. “Just in time.”
“Me too,” I say.
I grab the Chest from Sam and thrust it into Six’s arms. Sam picks up our bags.
“Why are you giving me this?” Six asks.
“Because we have to get the hell out of here!” I say. I grab Sam and drape him across my shoulders. “Hold on!” I yell.
We sprint away, deeper into the hills away from the river, Bernie Kosar in the lead as a hawk. Let the cops try to keep up now, I think.
It’s hard running with Sam on my shoulders, but I still keep a pace three times faster than what he could run on his own. And a far faster pace than any of the officers. Their yelling voices fade away, and after both helicopters just crashed in a heaping mess, who’s to say they’re even following?
After twenty minutes of a full-on sprint, we stop in a small valley. Sweat runs down my face. I shrug Sam off and he drops the bags. Bernie Kosar lands.
“Well, I imagine we’re going to be all over the news again after that,” Sam says.
I nod. “Staying hidden is going to be a lot harder than I thought.” I bend over at the waist, catching my breath with my hands on my knees. I smile, which quickly changes to a kind of incredulous half laugh
over what just happened.
Six grins crookedly, adjusts the Chest in her arms, and begins climbing the next hill.
“Come on, guys,” she says. “We’re far from out of the woods just yet.”
Chapter Eight
WE HOP A FREIGHT TRAIN IN TENNESSEE, AND once we are settled Six tells us about her and Katarina being captured while they were in upstate New York, just a month after narrowly escaping the Mogadorians in West Texas. This second time around, after botching the first attempt, the Mogadorians had planned well; and when they stormed the room, they totaled more than thirty in number. Six and Katarina had been able to take a few down, but they were quickly bound, gagged, and drugged. When Six woke up-having no idea how much time had passed-she was alone in a cell in a hollowed-out mountain. She didn’t discover she was in West Virginia until some time later. Six learned the Mogadorians had been trailing them the entire time, observing, hoping the two might lead them to the others, because, in Six’s words, “Why kill one when the others might be near?” I shift uneasily when she says this. Maybe she is still being followed and they are waiting for the perfect time to kill us.
“They had bugged our car when we were eating in the diner in Texas, and it never once occurred to either of us to check,” she says, and then gives herself over to a long silence.
Aside from an iron door containing a sliding hatch in its center for food to be delivered through, her tiny cell was made entirely of rock, measuring eight feet on each side. She had no bed or toilet, and the cell was pitch-black. The first two days passed in total darkness and silence, without food or water (though she never felt hungry or thirsty, which, she said she later learned, was due to the charm’s effect), and she had started to believe she’d been forgotten. But her luck hadn’t been that good, and on the third day they came for her.
“When they opened the door I was huddled in the far corner. They threw a bucket of cold water on me, picked me up, blindfolded me, and pulled me away.”
After being dragged down a tunnel, they’d let her walk on her own while surrounded by ten or so Mogs. She could see nothing, but heard plenty-screams and cries from other prisoners there for who knows what reasons (when he heard this, Sam perked up and seemed about to interrupt and ask questions, but said nothing), the roars of beasts locked away in their own cells, and metallic clanking. And then she had been thrust in a room, had her wrists chained to a wall, and been gagged. They’d ripped off her blindfold, and when her eyes finally adjusted, she saw Katarina on the opposite wall, also chained and gagged and looking far worse than Six felt.
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