Tritium Gambit

by Erik Hyrkas

  Chapter 33. Max

  I scrambled up a wet hill to a dirt road. To my left I could see Lake Superior through the rain, and to my right I could see a massive tow truck parked on the side of the freeway. Then I watched the trees being pushed aside near the dirt road between me and the tow truck.

  I ran for Lake Superior. There wasn’t much hope. It was a half mile run and the Wendigo was almost on top of me. The holograms of my mother and father were running beside me, keeping an eye out for the Wendigo, but they weren’t much help.

  Lightning flashed and a split second later thunder boomed overhead. The rain was falling harder now, making the ground slick.

  “He’s almost caught up,” my father said.

  “I know, Dad.”

  “He knows Harold,” my mother said.

  “He said to watch out for the Wendigo, and that’s what I’m doing,” my father replied.

  “Yes, but you don’t need to state the obvious,” my mother said.

  “It might not have been obvious to him,” my father said. “Remember, you didn’t want to tweak the DNA to give him the mental acuity boost.”

  “That’s so unnatural, which reminds me: I think he needs to eat less meat,” my mother said, that note of concern in her voice again.

  I tapped my ring and they vaporized. “I can’t take my parents anywhere,” I said to the rain. I pulled out my graviton bars as I ran and set them to maximum reverse. They emitted an ominous hum. If you think of gravity as a rubber sheet that large objects push dents into when resting on it, then the graviton bars were effectively a finger pushing up from the bottom. A ping pong ball rolling on that sheet would naturally roll gently across the rubber until it came too close to a large object and fell into the dip, and the opposite was true with the graviton bars’ hill in that metaphorical rubber sheet—the ping pong ball would roll away from the peak. At maximum reverse, the graviton bars would roughly cancel out Earth’s gravity, creating close to zero gravity in a thirty-foot radius. Of course, there was the small downside to using maximum power—the bars had a decent chance of becoming unstable and forming a black hole right in my hands.

  I spun and jumped as straight up as I could. The Wendigo closed on me quickly. I was nearly out of its reach when it pounced. Unfortunately for the beast, he didn’t know anything about zero gravity physics. The two of us were propelled upward. As we rose, I saw that the tow truck was barreling in our direction. The Wendigo grabbed me tightly and seemed triumphant at first until it realized that we were still going up. I held the graviton bars close to my body, figuring that if I ended up as a snack, that he was going to have swallow them.

  When we were a hundred feet off the ground, the Wendigo’s grip on me loosened, I locked the graviton bars in space-time. Suddenly, the Wendigo gained a lot of weight. I held onto my bars as I slipped through his grip and he fell like Wile E. Coyote holding an anvil.

  “Beep, beep, mother fucker,” I said.

  He landed with crushing force, and then the tow truck slammed into his head. “How’s that for a Tylenol headache?”

  I swung in the air as if I were crossing monkey bars, planting the graviton bars at the end of each swing and descending in a spiral. Below me, the tow truck spun around, and I saw Miranda hop out of the passenger seat and wrap chains around the Wendigo’s legs.

  When I was twenty feet above the tow truck, I turned off the graviton bars and landed on the truck’s flatbed.

  “Go!” I said.

  Miranda leapt onto the flatbed with lightning speed and hammered the top of the cab with her fist. Mud flew as the tires spun, and Miranda and I held on to the tow truck’s arm as we accelerated.

  She pulled out her Voltaic Fusion Pistol blasted the Wendigo repeatedly in the head. Her weapon’s bullets themselves wouldn’t have been worse than getting shot by rubber bullets—which do hurt by the way—but they generated huge electrical shocks on impact. The effect was similar to getting struck by lightning. Unfortunately, at the rate she was blasting him, she was going to run out of ammo fast.

  We left a trail of yellow-green ooze behind us on the muddy road and then streaked the highway with it. I looked into the cab and saw that John was driving. Wherever he was taking us, we were getting there fast. The rain was coming down even harder now, and we were as soaked as two people can be.

  For the briefest moment, I was starting to think we might be winning, but then Miranda’s Voltaic Fusion Pistol made an unfortunate clicking sound. She tucked it away in her belt and tapped on the cab window.

  “We have two minutes at most. Are we almost there?” she asked through the sliding back window John opened.

  Before he could answer, the Wendigo began flailing at the end of the chain even as he bounced horribly down the blacktop. He whacked a passing car with his fist and knocked over signs.

  “Crap,” I said. “He’s healing, and he doesn’t look happy.”

  The Wendigo grabbed a guardrail as we passed and ripped it free. The creature began swinging it at the tow truck, missing twice before the galvanized steel slashed through one of our rear tires and the truck skidded.

  There was a tool box on the flat bed, and I opened it, grabbed a spider lug wrench, and threw it like a ninja star at the Wendigo’s face. He roared in anger when the heavy steel hit him. I found a twenty pound sledgehammer and hurled it. The big hammer made a sickening crunch when it struck him in the nose, but I knew I wasn’t doing any serious harm. I just wanted to provide any distraction I could, but I was out of heavy tools and so I started throwing screwdrivers like knives. My aim was good, even if the tools were ineffective against the Wendigo. He looked like a big metal porcupine had gotten too close to his face by the time I ran out of the screwdrivers.

  I was out of things to throw, and the Wendigo was franticly lashing out with his arms, grabbing anything he could reach to hurl at us. A sign reading “Silver Bay Marina 1 Mile” embedded itself into the truck so close to me that I had to pull my shirt free.

  “Keep him busy for a little bit more,” Miranda said. “I have an idea.”

  She leaned into the cab to talk to John and then leapt off the truck. She bounced with lightning speed toward the waterfront.

  “Keep him busy?” I asked. “That should be easy.”

  I pulled a loose chain off the flatbed, stepped all the way back toward the cab, and then made a running leap toward the Wendigo. I landed on his stomach. With blinding speed, he grabbed hold of me with his giant hand, and I lashed repeatedly at his fist with the chain while he tried to crush the life out of me. I wasn’t winning the battle but I was keeping him busy.

  We hit a huge bump as the tow truck flew over a curb and onto a wet sidewalk. The Wendigo groaned as his flesh was ripped off his back. My ribs began popping as he squeezed, and I lost sensation in my legs when my spine finally snapped. I kept lashing at his hand with my chain though. Bright green blood oozed from him now from everywhere I could reach.

  Miranda leapt back into view holding a red gas can. The Wendigo swung at her, but she jumped back and forth out of the way. Each time she leapt over him, she dumped more gas on him. In his rage, the creature threw me at her. I landed on a pile of rocks like a ragdoll. My vision went blurry, but I fought to remain conscious and watched the tow truck drive toward the end of a dock with the Wendigo on the end of the chain hooked to the boom. Miranda then lit the Wendigo and he went up like a bonfire. The creature moaned and roared.

  I blinked a few times as black spots tangoed in my vision. Through the haze and dancing shapes, I saw that the Wendigo managed to pull its feet free of the tow truck right as it went over the end of the dock. The flames on its body were dying out, but the beast looked panicked to be on a dock over water. He leapt over Miranda and shot out of my line of vision. I lost consciousness.