Outcasts

by Alan Janney

  “My father doesn’t want any part of that.” I pointed at Samantha as she leaned back, holding her stomach with one hand and loosening her belt with the other.

  “I don’t care,” she sighed. “Don’t need him anymore. I’m good.”

  Puck texted me. >> puck is sending help ur way, u dummies.

  I replied, Send money too. We’re broke.

  We sat in silence, digesting at an inhuman rate. I sucked on a mint from the counter and closed my eyes, trying to remember how many hostages boarded the helicopter. Not enough.

  “So how’d you do all that?” Samantha asked, interrupting my recollections.

  “Do all what?”

  “Chase.” She glared with a piercing, knowing glint in her eye. “You have telekinesis. Or something.”

  “I have what??”

  “You controlled the Chosen with your mind.”

  “Oh. That. No, I just yelled at them and they believed me.” I screwed up my eyes and replayed the night’s events in my mind. How had that happened? I remembered watching the enemy…knowing they’d do as I ordered…understanding the disease in me dominated the disease in them…some preternatural instinct told me so. “It was like, in that moment of time, I was connected to them. Like wolves in a pack. We shared a collective mind. And I was the Alpha. Does that make sense?”

  “No. Maybe. But what about the regular guys? His normal thugs? Why did they obey you?”

  “I don’t know, Samantha.” I rubbed my forehead and pinched the bridge of my nose. “I’m too tired. Don’t over think it. They might have just been scared.”

  “Did you kill Walter?”

  “No,” I sighed, irritated at the memory. Walter was lethal. Quick as a viper. He’d gotten stronger too; I felt it. “I think I broke his shoulder. One of the Chemist’s new electro-toys zapped me and he got away.”

  “Wimp,” she grinned.

  “You shut up. Those guys hurt. Fried my earpiece.”

  “Did they get you with a baton? Or the electric gloves?”

  “Never saw the gloves. Just guys holding electrified bats. Actually, it was a girl that shocked me.”

  She nodded. “The gloves are nasty. They touch you, or you touch them, pow. Like a bomb goes off on contact.”

  “What happens if the glove is armed and they accidentally touch a flagpole or something?”

  “Or your Boom Stick?”

  “I need thicker gloves.” I pulled mine from my pocket. The fabric was torn in multiple places. Lee would receive my commission soon for a new pair. “I didn’t sense the Chemist. Or smell him, or whatever it is that alerts us he’s nearby.”

  “I thought Walter was in Seattle. Guess he came in for that damn Teresa Triplett news bulletin.”

  “Who knows.” I shook my head. “They just fly around, destroying the planet at their leisure. And we keep missing them.”

  She yawned so wide her jaw cracked. “This has been a long forty-eight hours. I don’t know how Puck goes days without sleeping.”

  To our surprise, Dad walked into iHop fifteen minutes later just as our fellow patrons began noticing Samantha’s resemblance to the girl on the television screens. The girl worth millions. Dad gave us both hugs and paid our bill.

  Samantha climbed into the front of his squad car. I fell into the back, next to Katie. She still wore camouflage, and I rested my head in her lap. Dad put the car in gear and we motored out of the parking lot. Katie carefully removed the sash from my head, unzipped my vest, and examined my various injuries.

  She pointed to a cut over my eye. “How’d you get this one?”

  “Walter hit me.”

  “I dislike Walter.”

  “Me too.”

  She sucked at her teeth, a cute look for her, and stared out the window in thought. “He’s the one who shot your helicopter down in Compton. With a rocket. And attacked you with a knife while I watched from the bus. Right?”

  “Correct.”

  “What about this one?” She gingerly touched an open gash on my shoulder.

  “Flying through windows.”

  “I think it needs stitches.”

  “It should heal in the next day or two,” I yawned. “Might leave a scar.”

  “Scars are sexy. What about this bruise?”

  “Gun shot. I think.”

  “Knives and glass penetrate your skin easier than bullets?”

  “Dunno,” I murmured from the cusp of consciousness. The quietly rocking car lulled me towards sleep.

  “What about this welt near your ear? It’s red and puffy. Some of the skin is peeling.”

  “Electrical burn.”

  “I forbid you from going into that tower again. Everyone there was mean to you.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  * * *

  I woke up a few hours later in an unknown bed. Katie was lying next to me, scratching my back with one hand and texting with the other. Other than the glow from her phone, it was dark. Other than the hum from an AC unit, it was quiet.

  I whispered, “Wanna make out?”

  “No,” she replied. “You stink.”

  “Okay. Good night again.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Sunday, January 7. 2019

  After hours of effort, I forced my eyelids open. The nightstand clock read 9:12. Hopefully morning. No windows. The room was small and white and undecorated. Military, most likely. No Katie.

  My dad sat on a metal chair in the corner, reading something on an iPad. Small brown reading glasses perched on his nose, comically small on such a big hairy guy. Samantha said he looks like the guy who used to host Dirty Jobs.

  “When’d you get glasses?” I grunted.

  He answered, “Recently,” but didn’t look up. “Quite a snore you got, boy.”

  I snorted some air through my nostrils. One side was mostly clogged. “I think something got knocked loose back there.” Talking made my head ring, but I felt…okay. The welt near my ear wasn’t as swollen as last night. My body ached instead of screamed. Rapidly regenerating body tissue and a high white blood cell count rules. “Sorry about our house.”

  “S’okay. All the furniture was ugly.”

  “Mom picked the furniture.”

  “Beautiful woman,” he sniffed at the memory, a smile on his face. “Bad decorator.”

  “Did we have insurance?”

  “Yes. Insurance company should have enough cash for all the Los Angeles payouts sometime next century. Your cousin called. He wants you to visit his fourth grade class. In costume.”

  “My costume is destroyed. Look. I’m surprised the parachute deployed. And my mask is gone.”

  I held up the mangled vest. It was burnt and ripped, never to be worn again. Dad turned his face away and closed his eyes. “Son. Fathers don’t need to see visual evidence of their sons’ brush with death.”

  “Sorry. Tell him I’ll visit his class if I get new gear. And call it gear, not a costume. Makes me sound cooler.”

  Dad turned off the iPad, slid glasses into his shirt pocket, cleared his throat, and said, “Has it occurred to you that if the Chemist had been there last night then you’d be dead?”

  I tried to get out of bed and failed. “What do you mean?”

  “From what you told’ve me, the Chemist is a much more dangerous monster than Walter. And if you almost died facing Walter…”

  I took a deep breath and let it out in a blast at the ceiling. “Yeah.”

  “Son, perhaps….if you are the world’s most valuable resource against this enemy, perhaps you should exercise more prudence about when to throw your life away.”

  “Prudence?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I don’t consider it ‘throwing my life away.’ Last night was a calculated risk.”

  He made a dissatisfied noise. “Did you have a plan? Last night during the calculated risk?”

  “Yes. Hit the Chemist in the head really hard.”

  “But he wasn’t there. And if he had been, c
an you even do that?”

  “…I’m not sure,” I admitted. And it was the truth. I didn’t know if I could. I hoped I could. But the evidence sided against me. He had been alive too long; his body was too strong, too fast, and his brain too quick.

  Sanguine. That was the word. I was being sanguine about my dismal chances. Katie would be proud of my vocabulary.

  “There is no father on earth more proud of his son than I am. But I am compelled to point out things that your…adoring public…won’t. You jumped into an enemy-occupied tower seeking a target that wasn’t there and nearly died. That wasn’t a calculated risk. That was an inch from a disaster. Samantha told me how close she and the others came to dying. Following you.”

  “Yeah. That was scary.”

  He nodded, his beefy arms crossed over his chest. “You’re doing all this for Katie, aren’t you.”

  “Probably. He threatened her and then put a bounty on her head.”

  “Are you sure dying during a rushed and miscalculated risk is the best way to protect her?”

  I had no answer. There was no correct response. So I stayed silent and prickled painfully with the rebuke.

  He said, “Your disease forces you to act unwisely.”

  “I deal with fight-or-flight episodes often. Samantha does too. The adrenaline makes us jumpy. Craves action.”

  His voice was thick with emotion and intensity. He leaned forward and rested forearms on his knees. “I honor your bravery. And I know you shoulder more responsibility and consequences than I can imagine. Far too much responsibility. It would crush a lesser person. But it seems to me that if you’re going to survive this, you’ll need to control the impulses.” He found my foot beneath the covers and shook it. “You’re doing a great job, kid. And your next step into manhood needs to be self-control. In your situation, you can’t afford many missteps.”

  “You’re right, Dad. I know you are. But I’m so desperate to get rid of the Chemist…you know?”

  “We all are. But I want you around for the decades it’ll take to clean up his mess.” He stood and put his hand on the door knob. “This is a marathon. Not a sprint.”

  “Understood.”

  “You should shower, too.”

  “Hey. Dad. Are you and Samantha…romantic?”

  “Aggressively so.”

  “Ewwww, Dad!” I covered my face with a pillow and punched it. “Gross gross gross. Why’d I ask that.”

  “I gotta go. Duty calls. A third of the force has quit and moved east. Keep in touch.”

  He left. I crawled out of bed and stretched, loosening all the sore muscles and joints. I took a shower, and pulled on khakis, a blue Air Force polo and my sneakers.

  Two airmen saluted when I opened the door into a bright hallway. I returned the greeting as best I could.

  “Good morning, sir. I have a list of messages for you.”

  I grunted, “Read them to me over breakfast.”

  “This way, sir.”

  I filled two plates from a breakfast buffet and sat down at an empty linoleum table in a large cafeteria. The conversations had temporarily halted when I walked in. A nearby group of burly and grim giants got up from their table and sat at mine.

  “I was with you, sir. Last night,” one of the five giants said. He was black and, despite the severity, he had a friendly face. His eye was swollen nearly shut and his nose was busted. “So were these two.”

  I asked, “You were the SEALs on the tower?”

  “And we’re home, thanks to you.”

  “My condolences on the loss of your fellow SEALs. They died well.”

  He nodded. “We watched you fight. Watched the enemy cower. We’re all in, sir. We’ve requested reassignment to your protection detail.”

  “You’ll have to clear it with my current protection detail. She doesn’t play well with others.”

  “The hot girl with a shotgun?”

  I laughed around a bite of eggs. “That’s her. She won’t make your life easy.”

  “The only easy day was yesterday, sir.”

  Yesterday was NOT easy. I glanced at one of the airmen who’d been at my door. “Any idea where my phone is?”

  “Yes sir. Ms Lopez has it. She said it was buzzing too much and waking you up.”

  “Where is she?”

  His face paled. “I’m not sure, sir. Sorry. I’ll find out. But she told us she’d meet you later.”

  I nodded and ate some bacon. I love bacon.

  “FBI pilot Mike Matthews is at the airfield,” he continued, reading off his notes. “He’s re-fueled and sleeping in the HRT helicopter, ready if you need him. Air Force is assigning him a gunner.”

  A cluster of soldiers approached our table, probably just wanting to take a picture. They had camera phones. The SEALs glared at the cluster, stopping them cold. After a long uncomfortable moment, the soldiers took the cue and left.

  The kid with notes kept going, “Special Agent Isaac Anderson reports there is a meeting at ten hundred hours. Your presence is required.”

  “You can get me there?” I asked.

  “Yes sir. You don’t need to prepare. And the Shooter will also attend.”

  “The Shooter?” I grinned.

  “That’s…that’s how she identified herself.”

  One of the SEALs nodded. “Hot girl with a shotgun.”

  I had nowhere to be for twenty minutes, so I remained at the table, drank juice, and chatted with the stony SEALs. The SEALs related details of last night’s fight to their comrades, using salt and pepper shakers and knives to demonstrate relative positions. On their small battlefield, I was a bottle of hot sauce. I approved. They got lost in their retelling and allowed an audience to gather until the cafeteria filled.

  They finished their narrative by saying, “The last we saw, sir, you and the Shooter jumped off the roof. Thought for sure you’d be dead. You were wearing a parachute?”

  “A wing-suit,” I replied. The crowd murmured. Pictures of this wing-suit had circulated online a few months ago.

  “Damn small wing-suit.”

  “I’ve got a good tailor.”

  The nervous airman found his voice. “Sir, we need to go. The briefing begins in five minutes.”

  I drained my juice and stood. So did the SEALs. They surrounded me and followed the airman, shouldering aside the mass of bodies. I did my best not to look overwhelmed in this bizarre parade. Through a labyrinth of corridors we marched silently for several minutes. Underground, I bet. I got lost quickly. Without a guide, I’d die down here. Finally we paused at a fancy elevator guarded by two armed soldiers.

  A grey-haired, uniformed man shook my hand and said, “Chase Jackson, I assume? I’m Major General Roberts. Welcome to the Los Angeles Air Force Base.”

  “I appreciate the hospitality.”

  “Gentlemen,” he addressed the SEALs. “I’ve been informed that your reassignment requests have been processed and approved. But you’ll have to remain here, outside the restricted areas.”

  “Yes Major General,” answered the SEALs. They were standing at attention. Perhaps I should stand straighter, too.

  The elevator scanned Roberts’ retina and we shuttled deeper into the earth. He commented, “I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Lopez. She’s even more lovely than her photographs.”

  “I have the pleasure of dating her. And it’s been even better than I hoped.”

  He chuckled. “She reminds me of my daughter. All smiles and optimism. I have a grandson on the way. My first. I’m trying to keep the world intact for him.”

  “Not a fun time to be pregnant.”

  “It speaks well of you, son, that men follow you so easily.” He raised his chin to indicate the SEALs far above us. “Good men don’t blindly follow poor leadership. That helps the rest of us trust you.”

  “Better find yourself a parachute,” I said. “Following me gets weird.”

  “Parachutes are useless without a safe place to land,” he grumbled, turning sour
. “The time for parachutes and all safety precautions might soon be at an end.

  “I’ve got a friend who’ll be delighted to hear that.”

  “I met her too. She’s…intense.”

  “Yeah. And you probably met her during one of her good moods, too.”

  He escorted me to a wide, wooden-paneled room with a mahogany table and black swivel chairs. One wall was a bank of television screens and computer monitors. The air smelled like money and secrets. Most chair were occupied with fancy old people who stood to shake my hand as Major General Roberts introduced me around the room. They were all heads of hard to pronounce military directorates. Some wore badges, which would help with name recall. I sat down between Isaac, who appeared to be healthier than he had in weeks, and Samantha, who appeared deeply bored.

  I whispered to Isaac, “How many of these folks do you trust?”

  “Don’t know most. So I don’t trust them.”

  Television screens flickered on. Video conference calls piped in from around the globe. Isaac quietly identified the Secretary of State; Secretary of Defense (“I trust him,” he said); Director of the CIA (“Him too.”); a representative from the Joint Chiefs; and finally the President of the United States, a handsome and square-faced guy going silver around the ears. He put on reading glasses and squinted at the screen.

  “Holy smokes,” I murmured. All the bigwigs greeted each other, deferring especially to the President, and made light-hearted smalltalk.

  “Remember what Carter said about the President,” Samantha whispered.

  Isaac whispered back, “We are aware the President’s under the influence of a powerful Infected girl, but we don’t know how to intervene.”

  “Blue-Eyes,” I said in a hushed voice. “I remember her.”

  As if on cue, the President peered intensely through his computer screen and broke into a grin. “Ah! Do I spy the infamous Chase Jackson?”

  I froze. Like someone sucked out all my oxygen and replaced it with ice water. The President of the United States of America just addressed me by name.